Provoked by Madrid and overloaded with responsibilities, the 18-year-old carries too great a burden. The Blaugrana club gave him the keys, but not a structure to protect him
Fooled. Mocked. Fucked up. Limited. Lamine Yamal came out of the Clásico very badly on this torrid Sunday afternoon at the Bernabeu. A single match of this size brings with it heavy consequences. And to make up for it you have to wait months.
THE LASH
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Lamine Yamal made a mistake, he was careless. He dialectically overheated the match against Madrid without thinking that physically he is very far from his best form. The groin pain that has been tormenting him for weeks prevents him from being explosive, from leaving quickly, leaving everyone behind, transforming him into an ordinary player. “You only make backward passes” was the mocking phrase thrown at him by Vinicius on the Bernabeu lawn. A lash about which nothing can be said on a technical level. With Madrid, Lamine never managed to make an impact, starting diagonally from right to left, sowing opponents and causing panic.
‘YOU TALK TOO MUCH’
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The second jab came to him at the end of the match, and it is equally real and painful at the same time: Dani Carvajal, captain of Madrid and one of the captains of the Spanish national team, made the gesture of someone who talks too much with his fingers. From there the riot that ended the match started, with the police in good numbers on the pitch. Eeeeh, no, it wasn’t a great idea to go to the King’s League stream known as ‘Chup Chup’ and say, verbatim, that “Madrid steal and complain”.
THE COMPARISON
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Open up heaven. And let’s start the comparisons: “Messi would never have done something like that”. What does Leo have to do with it? It’s that Lamine has the ’10’ on his shoulders, earns 5 times what the Argentine earned at his age and is the natural heir of the player who changed Barça’s history. In Madrid they fear him to death, and when he exposed his side with his sofa banter with friends and Play, the anti-aircraft fire started from the capital.
HERE IS ELVIS
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The Bernabeu was waiting for him, the Bernabeu massacred him with whistles and insults, the Bernabeu rejoiced in his every difficulty. “I left my fear in Rocafonda many years ago” the boy with braces wrote on Instagram before the Clásico. The third broadside from the white-clad opponents arrived on the same platform. Jude Bellingham commented on the 2-1 win over Barcelona on Instagram: photos of his goal celebration, the comment “Talk is cheap”, talking is easy, and Elvis Presley’s song ‘A little less conversation’ which invites us to do more and talk less. In Lamine Yamal your ears will be ringing.
BETWEEN LEO AND GERI
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Vini, Carva, Jude. Three different ways of telling Lamine Yamal the same thing. The 18-year-old from Barça obviously shrugs. The father intervened in his defense, the type who never misses an opportunity to seek publicity from his son’s reflection, but the feeling is clear: something is wrong in the life and management of the greatest talent to explode in Spain in recent years. Barcelona gave him the keys to the club, they would like to make a Messi out of him but they are finding themselves in the hands of a Piqué, and in fact the former defender was present on the evening of ‘Chup Chup’ last week. He laughed slyly. Then he said that Lamine Yamal should be defended and left alone, but he did neither of the two things. And the relationship between the two must be significant, because El Pais and El Periodico have said that Lamine is in negotiations to buy the ‘mansion’ that Piqué shared with Shakira in the very elegant Esplugues barrio in Barcelona before cheating on the singer and ruining the marriage. Price of the house: 14 million euros.
THE LIGHTHOUSE
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This Barcelona without great media stars, Lewandowski is at the end of the line, Pedri is phenomenally shy, Raphinha, De Jong, Dani Olmo, Koundé do not emerge as transcendent characters, he sees his lighthouse in Lamine Yamal. As was Messi, who however had Piqué and Puyol around him, Dani Alves and Busquets, Xavi and Iniesta, Mascherano and Fabregas, a coach like Guardiola who had no doubts in removing Ronaldinho and Deco, and then Eto’o, three sacred monsters, to protect Leo and remove from him influences that Pep considered negative.
SOLITUDE
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Lamine is alone. His father and mother don’t help him, Jorge Mendes is far away, his friends are kids like him. And the money is always more. An immense figure like the fame that arrived very quickly with all its load of flattery and traps. Everything he does takes on greater importance than expected and above average, is exaggerated and often backfires. He wants to live, and he wants to do it in his own way, but he doesn’t care about fame and exposure.
NATIONAL PROBLEM
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And now we’ll see what will happen in the national team: in the September match De la Fuente made Lamine Yamal play with painkiller injections and Flick got furious by attacking him head-on. During the October shift he remained at home, bruised. We’ll see what happens in November. For De la Fuente it is fundamental, and the rift with Carvajal will have to be mended. We are not at the levels of conflict of 2011, when Del Bosque asked Puyol to mediate in the crisis between Xavi and Casillas, but the tension is evident. Lamine Yamal must be protected, by his youth, by his exuberance, by his inexperience. There is a priceless wealth of talent at stake for Barcelona and Spain.
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