Lamine Yamal dragged Barcelona back from the brink in their Champions League semi-final against Inter. Watching him, it’s easy to forget he’s only 17 years old.
When you stop and think about it, what is arguably most impressive about Lamine Yamal’s performance against Inter on Wednesday night is the fact he has done it so many times before.
Still just a teenager, it would be very, very easy indeed to start taking him for granted.
Having become the second-youngest player ever to start a Champions League semi-final (17 years, 291 days) when the game kicked off, he went on to smash Kylian Mbappé’s record as the youngest player to score in a game in the last four of the competition.
That’s a reminder of just how young Lamal is. And yet he has achieved so much already.
This was his 100th senior appearance for Barcelona, less than a year on from playing a starring role for Spain in their run to Euro 2024 glory. It also came just a few days after playing 120 minutes and getting two assists in a 3-2 extra-time Copa del Rey final triumph over Real Madrid.
He also became just the second teenager to score in the last 16, quarter-finals and semi-finals of the UEFA Champions League in a single campaign after Mbappé did so for Monaco in 2016-17.
And yet, while he has proven time and again that we should probably – and this sounds utterly absurd to say of a 17-year-old – have come to expect this of Yamal, he still shocked and awed with a devastating display against Inter.
“Lamine Yamal is a phenomenon born every 50 years,” Inter manager Simone Inzaghi reflected after the game. “We had to put three players on him. We managed it better in the second half and could even have won [the game]. We made some adjustments to improve how we dealt with him after the break, which is not easy. He really impressed me. He is a player I had not seen live before.”
Indeed, on a night when Barcelona were huge favourites to win and many would have even expected them to put one foot in the final by taking a dominant first-leg lead, Inter ripped up the script. Yamal was one of the main reasons Barça did not lose the game.
They went 2-0 down inside 21 minutes. It was only the second time ever that Barcelona had conceded twice that early at home in a Champions League game. A shock loomed.
But then Yamal grabbed the game. He shrugged off Marcus Thuram to win a loose ball, glided into the Inter box and bent a curling effort in off the left-hand post to pull his side back into the tie.
That was to be his most telling contribution to the game in terms of output, but he was a constant threat throughout. Barcelona’s main tactic all night was to get the ball to him despite having a team packed with attacking talent, including Raphinha on the left flank, who is close to breaking the all-time record for goal involvements in a Champions League season.
Yamal had 102 touches in total, the third most on the pitch behind central midfielders Frenkie de Jong (112) and Pedri (107). Raphinha by comparison had 63. Centre-forward Ferran Torres had just 26.
Seventeen of his touches came in the opposition’s box, which was only three fewer than the rest of the Barcelona team combined (20) and two more than Inter’s (15). Only one player – Franck Ribéry, with 18 vs Real Madrid on 25 April 2018 – has ever had more touches in the opposition’s box in a Champions League semi-final. Yamal is proving age is but a number, but it is still stark that Ribéry was 35 – twice as old as Yamal – in that game.
The Barcelona winger doesn’t rely on the exceptional passing ability of teammates De Jong, Pedri and Dani Olmo to get into advanced positions.
That isn’t his game. He prefers to get on the ball in front of opponents and run at them. Of the 80 passes he received, only 27 broke a line of Inter’s defensive shape. Just one broke Inter’s defensive line, and he received only two of them inside the Inter box.
And once he gets on the ball, he can go either way; onto his right as he did to beat Henrikh Mkhitaryan in the lead-up to his goal, or infield onto his stronger left foot, which he used to bend a shot into the far corner. Over the course of the game, he both attempted (11) and successfully completed (six) more dribbles than all of his Barcelona teammates combined (nine/five).
He also had more shots (six) than anyone else on the pitch and, on top of his goal, hit the woodwork twice. While being the main player Barcelona had to thank for their first-leg stalemate, he also came closer than anyone else on his team to nicking a win.
Inter showed this tie is not going to be the one-sided affair many expected, but if Barcelona are going to win it, Yamal is surely going to play a key role.
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