Lamine Yamal Wows On Accident And On Purpose

Lamine Yamal’s first stardust play of the game began with an apology. Carrying the ball up the field 10 minutes into Tuesday’s deciding leg of the Barcelona-Benfica Champions League tie, Lamine picked up his head, saw Raphinha opening up his stride, and lifted his hand in contrition.

The gesture communicated that he appreciated the Brazilian forward’s run, which presented the duo a great chance for another one of the thunderbolts they’ve spent all season tossing back and forth to each other, but as he hadn’t read the play quickly enough and wasn’t prepared to hit the pass before its window of opportunity closed, the Spaniard couldn’t reward his teammate’s effort with the pass the moment called for. Coming from the talent it came from, implicit in this apology was another sentiment: “Don’t worry, I’ll make up for it.”

It took just a few seconds for him to make good on that implied promise/threat. And though the pass Lamine was sorry he couldn’t give Raphinha probably would’ve been cool—surely another trivela, like the one Lamine had already narrowly missed Raphinha with a little earlier in the match—what came next was even better, though not totally intentionally. As Lamine lowered his penitent hand, he continued his jog up the field. Midfielder Florentino Luís, the nearest opponent, was in a tough spot. He didn’t want to get too close, lest he get spun in a blender like the typical defender who tries to challenge Lamine head-on. By how hard he was overplaying the inside of the pitch with his body positioning, he was practically begging Lamine to cut outside, where the Spaniard is perhaps marginally less dangerous without the use of the instep of his left foot.

It was no matter. Lamine chopped inside anyway, forcing Florentino to spin his entire body in the direction he’d tried so hard to discourage. Then, with a big dramatic wave of the same hand he’d raised to Raphinha earlier, Lamine chopped outside. The motion—which recalled both the exaggerated pump fakes of former teammate Ousmane Dembélé and the Lionel Messi hip-swish that had once felled Jérôme Boateng like a dead tree that just met a lightsaber—dropped Florentino to the ground. (Unfortunately for the poor Portuguese player, it seems Lamine relishes opportunities to make Florentinos feel bad.) Having already demonstrated the remarkable flexibility of his hips, Lamine ran back onto the ball, then torqued his hips again in a flash to square himself toward the far post, and slapped the ball forward. For once, his supreme technical ability let him down. Rather than than curl into the upper corner of the goal as he clearly intended it to (after the game he confirmed it was an attempted shot), the ball instead curved in the opposite direction, bending onto a late Raphinha run and allowing the Brazilian to glance it into the net for his 26th goal of the season. Pretty good as far as accidents go.

For his next feat, Lamine had no need for luck. About 15 minutes after his unintended assist to Raphinha, to which Benfica had already responded with a Nicolás Otamendi equalizer, the 17-year-old chased down a ball that was headed out of bounds deep into Benfica territory. Once again, only a single opponent stood in front of him, this time Tomás Araújo—a death sentence for any defender. Once again, the defender overplayed his body position so as to force Lamine one way. This time, Lamine went where the defender was showing him, inside. Araújo raced Lamine to the ball, but Lamine’s right foot got there first. Araújo’s failed lunge eliminated him from the play, and all he could do is lift his hands to telegraph to the referee that he had not fouled the Spaniard, and then scream for a help defender to close down the now free-running winger.

As he ran onto his perfectly measured right-footed toe poke, Lamine sized up his surroundings and noticed that the same upper-left-hand corner of the goal he’d missed before was practically crying out for a shot. In what was perhaps a response to his mis-kick on the Raphinha goal, and maybe a concession to the one weakness in his game (his finishing), rather than attempt a typical shooting technique, Lamine just sort of clipped the ball with his left foot’s big toe as if he was attempting a cross. The bail leisurely sailed up and over the congested penalty box, up and over the keeper’s uselessly outstretched hand, and caressed the inner side of the net. If earlier he had shot and assisted on accident, this time he passed and scored on purpose.

Those two plays earned the teenager yet another record for precocity, this time making him the youngest player to score and assist in the same Champions League game. The plays and the dominant individual and team performances they encapsulated—Barça won 3-1 on the day and 4-1 on aggregate—signified yet another peak for the team that has hit heights no other in Europe has matched this season.

It’s still way too early to feel particularly strongly about any one candidate’s odds, but at the moment Lamine and Raphinha have to be two of the biggest favorites for the next Ballon d’Or. (Sorry, Pedri, but they’re going to give it to the guys with the goals.) Once Lamine figures out how to score at this level the way he did in the youth ranks (really it’s just a matter of being quick with ugly shots rather than always breaking out the protractor and compass), he’ll start adding goals and maybe even Ballons d’Or by the handful. It’s psychotic how good Lamine is—so good that amazing things happen whether he means for them to or not.