Barcelona’s Biggest Mistake? The Truth About Lamine Yamal.
So… listen to this… they say Lamine Yamal should’ve won the Ballon D’Or, yet, Lamine Yamal did not win the Champions League… He did not win the club world cup… he did not win the nations league… so, he must have been the best player in each of those tournaments, after all, it’s an individual award… Okay… so who was La Liga’s MVP? That was Raphinha… the Champions League’s MVP? That was Dembelé… sure, but the Champions League’s Young Player Of The Year? That was Desiré Doué… and, the cherry on top… after going out of his way to hype up
the Nations League to be the Ballon D’Or decider, getting the entire world to stop and hold their breaths as they watched those two remaining games… surely he was the MVP there, right?… no, that was Nuno Mendes… precisely the player that was marking him… Look, don’t get me wrong, I know people are very passionate about him and for good reason so it is inevitable that some will take this video the wrong way and that’s why I wanna to get into my rant by putting up one question: In this digital age where more and more people
are watching football on their phones, mostly through twitter, tiktok highlights and sofascore… how easy is it really to differentiate what part of this excitement is real or raw… and how much of it is fabricated, recontextualized and polished before it gets to us? After all, even Johan Cruyff himself wrote about a decade ago that “Personally, I cannot take this award s
eriously anymore, it’s a media circus… everybody votes for their own man”… and if you doubt that clubs, agents, even sportswear brands like Adidas and Nike are going out of their way to influence the voting behind closed doors, let me remind you that, already in 2022, PSG was put under investigation for literally trying to bribe Pascal Ferre, the actual organizer of the Ballon D’Or, not with money but with “various favours” and yes… I can hear you already yelling at me that PSG is Dembelé’s team not Yamal’s and… you’re right, so right in fact that, less than a month ago, Neal Gardner, interestingly the owner of one of the biggest Barcelona fan accounts on twitter,
received an email by a company describing themselves as “next gen marketing and advertising powerhouse, redefining brand story telling” asking him to make a series of tweets in favour of Dembelé’s run to the Ballon D’Or, even asking him to “treat this with the utmost confidentiality”… They’re so unashamed about it, that when he exposed everything… they literally blamed it on the internet… I am not joking… but again, if you think this is only happening with Dembelé, I got bad news for you… Though no concrete evidence has ever come out,
there have repeatedly been claims that even Fabrizio Romano, probably the most famous football journalist on the planet right now, has been part of some kind of campaign in Yamal’s favour… I mean, come on, the guy has tweeted, from my count, at least 140 times about Yamal… Dembelé has been ranked number one by every betting house for a while and, still, since the start of August not only has he tweeted more about Yamal than him, but 40% of the times he tweeted out Dembelé’s name, it was because he was actually still tweeting about Yamal… his marketing is just
on whole other level from every other football, I mean, let’s just check Tiktok for a second: Yeah, no wonder the cult of Yamal is growing at record speeds, as much as it has been unbelievable to witness his talents grow these past 2 years, we have to be honest with ourselves, as much as I don’t think we are overhyping at all because the potential is there, even overrating may not be the right word… but I feel like, at the current moment, we are overcrediting him… looking to over… rewarding him? Listen, let’s get back to that Ballon D’Or,
Yamal vs Dembelé, who had the best year? Yamal hit 39 goal contributions in 55 matches, but that number was never the point… the real deal was how he got there… first of all, doing everything with such ease, such class on the pitch, being easily one of the most mesmerizing player on the planet even if, I must say, we should always be careful not to value aesthetics over function when it comes to these awards… though, on the other hand, he did save some of his best moments for the very best of matches, scoring in 3 out of the 4 El Classico’s he played and then
getting two assists in the one that remained, precisely in the Copa Del Rey final, as well as that wonderful goal against the Netherlands and, above all, a goal in every knockout round of the Champions League, culminating in that phenomenal performance vs Inter, in a semi final that many have called the greatest ever, just phenomenal… but, wait a second, what about Dembelé? Though much more focused on the sheer volume of his numbers, 49 goal contributions in 53 matches, even though he was much more frequently subbed in and out, leading to a goal contribution
frequency of 1.27 per 90, compared to Yamal’s 0.66… this man took center stage in, by far, the most historic season of one of the biggest clubs in Europe… there is no way anyone will ever be able to go back to this season and not see Dembelé scoring… come on, 2 goals in the play offs, then the only one against Liverpool, 2 assists in the quarters, a goal and an assist versus Arsenal who defeated the reigning Champions and 2 assists against the Inter that Yamal could not beat in the final of a campaign for PSG’s first ever Champions League title, as well as the
french cup, the winning goal in the supercup, the league title as the top scorer and goals against Bayern and Real on the way to the Club World Cup final, the only one he lost… this is the kind of thing football’s historic books are made of… and not only did he do this, after Mbappé’s departure, fulfilling the legacy that one of their greatest of all time never could, not only did he do it after revolutionizing his career by switching into a new role mid season… after being deemed a “wasted talent” for years… all in all, providing just as much of an interesting
or entertaining narrative as Yamal, but, man, he was not boring… there should be some praise to his aesthetic side too… watching defenders try to stop him was hilarious, too fast, too ambidextrous, too strong… but also with a silky touch? I don’t know, it sounds like a pretty compelling argument to me… wherever Dembelé went, he finished the job… and that’s where I must go back and finish talking about Yamal because, first, as much as that Inter performance was amazing, there has been this recurring idea that he was “unlucky to be knocked out”, that having hit the
woodwork three times in that game, he should get a pass on not winning that trophy which just leads me to question when did the Ballon D’Or become a participation award? After all, this wasn’t a rare occurrence in Yamal’s season, it’s time we talk about the Nations League situation… We all know what happened, with only the Nations League remaining before the season was over… Yamal and Dembelé got matched up in the semi final and with the media hyping this as the Ballon D’Or decider, which must be said, given the downplayment of the Nations League in previous
years, seemed like another marketing plot to flip a script that already seemed settled… Yamal joined the hype train, making a series of cryptic social media posts, then claiming that “if people want to decide it on Thursday, then let’s play” before, in fact, scoring twice and taking the man of the match to send Dembelé home… but, as much as I appreciate his guts to go all-in in a situation like that… then, in the final, he was a ghost of himself, making sure that in the one final out of the 3 big international tournaments of the year that he did reach… he missed out on the
trophy again… remember what I said early about the history books of football? Well, the history books tend to be written by those who won the battles… However, with all that said, there is still one remaining argument in favour of Yamal that seems inescapable… his age… but once again, there’s an obvious reply as well… since when has the Ballon D’Or become a youth trophy or some kind of rookie award? I mean, isn’t that what the Kopa Trophy is there for? Yamal has just become the first ever player to win it twice in a row despite him being young enough that he
will still be in contention for it over the next 3 years, isn’t that an incredible achievement in itself? Again, just because Yamal’s age makes him more exciting, it doesn’t make him better, it should have no effect whatsoever, positive or negative, regarding the Ballon D’Or… and, the one thing in all of this that truly grinds my gears is how often the media circus around his age as led people to get it wrong… the guy is already 18 and I guarantee you there will still be someone in the comment section of this video getting at me, claiming that “we have never seen a 16 year
old like this” when, in reality, even all the way back when he won the Euros, he was already 17… I mean, sure, it isn’t his fault that his birthday is so deceiving, coming right after the end of the season… but that argument is just incredibly overblown… It seems to me that the whole thing is oddly related to people’s obsession with Ronaldo and Messi, just the other day, I read an article on a big newspaper calling him “the best 17 year old ever, even better than Messi”… which makes
no sense because, I hate to be the one to have to say this but Ronaldo and Messi were nowhere near the best teenage players the world has seen… as incredible as they were, at age 17, Ronaldo was putting down 8 goal contributions in 33 matches for Sporting and Messi was finishing his season with only 9 games played and 1 goal scored for Barça… that comparison makes no sense, if you want some real ones than let me remind you of a young Kylian Mbappé… Back in 2016, Mbappé burst onto the scene, taking over as Monaco’s star player in a matter of months
and still younger than Yamal is right now, he scored twice against Man City and 3 times against Dortmund to put Monaco in the Champions League semi finals, where he’d get another goal against Juventus only to get knocked out regardless, just as Yamal, except this was Monaco’s best UCL campaign in 13 years and he had also put down 37 goal contributions overall to beat PSG to the league title, which only happened once in the space of 8 years… and still, rightfully, he only finished 7th at the end of the year… even worse, the following one, he put down 44
goal contributions, went out, won the World Cup, scoring in the final and putting down one of the greatest ever performances, scoring a brace to knock out Messi’s Argentina… and still finished 4th… and, no, he is not the only one… I mean, in 2011, though he did turn 19 that year, Neymar put down 33 goal contributions, went head to head with Ronaldinho in the game of the century, won Santos the first Libertadores since the times of Pelé and even made it to the Club World Cup final and still
didn’t even finish tenth… and remember… people keep saying “greatest… ever”… that means that in this discussion there should also be Ronaldo, the actual phenomenon, who at 16, in the 1993 season, scored against every single team he faced in the league aside from Corinthians, even hitting 5 in a single league game against Bahia, as well as 7 in 3 Libertadores matches, with a hat trick on his debut… as well as, of course, Pelé who, at 17, scored a hat trick in the semis and a brace in the final to win the World Cup, already on top of a club season where he put down 84 goal
contributions… but yeah… last year Yamal scored 7 goals and made 7 assists in 50 matches and we had him at 8th place already… and don’t even bother blaming the Euros because Nico Williams finished 15th but… we don’t even need to talk about these all time greats, let’s look at Desiré Doué… 30 goal contributions for the season… treble winner, man of the match in the final of the Coupe De France, man of the match in the Champions League final with 2 goals and an assist, still only 19 years old… and if you look at their stats… about the same per 90 numbers in
goals and assists, despite shooting far less than Yamal, creating at the same rate as well, better in every aspect defensively and though inferior in one on one situations, still elite, an incredibly exciting player, at times, you could almost mix him up with Neymar… all of this while playing all across the pitch, still finding his place in the team while Yamal was locked at right winger… yet, he finished 14th with one fifth of the votes Yamal got… last year… this one… he got 14x more… you see, the thing about this is that I could keep going… What about Raphinha?
He was playing in the same club, won the same trophies, same everything, far better numbers with 56 goal contributions overall, 4 in the Champions League’s last 16, 3 in the quarters, 2 in the semis, literally breaking Messi’s records and yet, after actually ranking number one for the Ballon D’Or in most betting houses for a while, after that Inter game in which he was the one to score the goal at the 88th minute that everyone assumed would put them in the final… Raphinha drops down to 5th while Yamal somehow goes up? What about Olise? He finished dead last,
even below Florian Wirtz, who was playing in the same league as him while Olise had the Bundesliga’s own social media calling his campaign the best debut season in the league’s history, with more goals and assists than any winger in the top 5 leagues, nearly doubling Yamal’s per 90 numbers, an absolutely ungodly scouting report, outperforming Yamal in virtually any stat, in fact, for a while if you searched up Yamal’s report, not only would you see that Olise showed up as the one player in the whole database who was the most similar to him but you’d notice that,
in reality, Yamal only tops the charts for one of the major stats in the report… and it’s shots total, which is hilarious considering there’s 130 players who’ve outscored him in the top 5 leagues, including 37 year old Pedro Rodriguez and 36 year old Iago Aspas… even his take ons, which get talked about so much by stats nerds, well… in that aspect he stills ranks below Jeremy Doku, despite attempting 115 take ons more than him… usage rates have to be taken into account, what other players
is playing within a system that provides him with so many opportunities to shine in each and every game… if the ball is always on you, you’re bound to do something with it… you see, it’s truly impossible to make sense of these awards and I haven’t even gotten into the criteria… Famously last year, despite being the Champions League’s player of the season after taking home a goal in the last 16, 2 assists in the quarters and then closing it off with 2 goals in the semis and another in the final, taking the Man Of The Match award in both rounds, Vinicius Jr. ended up losing
the Ballon D’Or to Rodri… supposedly, first, because Rodri had won an international tournament with his national team which, I guess, should mean that either Vitinha or Nuno Mendes should be the winners now, right? I mean, I haven’t seen such a press resistant midfield maestro since Iniesta and Mendes may genuinely be the best left back since Marcelo… yeah, no, that didn’t happen because it didn’t make any sense if you look any other edition of the award ever… defensive players, even central midfielders barely ever win… the problem is that few players had worse marketing
that Vini at the time… which, of course, leads me to the second point when the organization itself came out with a second justification, pointing to the sign and claiming that aside from individual performance and team achievements, class and fair play are also part of the Ballon D’Or’s criteria… which sounds ridiculous now, considering that Lamine Yamal seemingly can never get away from controversy, may it be the time he rushed into the locker rooms after losing the Nations League final, being spotted taking off his medal before he was even in the tunnel or may it be his
infamous birthday party that not only included the hiring of dwarves as performers which is literally illegal in Spain, but a birthday cake with guns, money and poker chips as ornaments… and that will be my final point… As I said in the beginning, we really need players like Yamal if we hope not to be bored out of our minds in this post Messi and Ronaldo era… but seeing some of these actions, it’s hard not to feel like he is taking the Neymar route… Now he has the number 10 on his back and he may feel immortal but he must be reminded of who he got
it from… not Messi, but Ansu Fati… when Yamal scored his first UCL goal, he was the second youngest ever… because at one point, Ansu Fati was doing it at an even younger age… in 2020, having just turned 17, he finished his year with a goal contribution every 110 minutes, a rate higher than what Yamal achieved even now already at 18… and then, it was all gone in a blip… and if there’s one thing that can speed up that process is to keep going that route, following the drama, the celebrity lifestyle and the cheap trills… and if there’s one other parallel with Neymar
that scares me… well… he, too, had a father who got way too involved and could not stay out of his sons way… nevertheless, 2nd place in the Ballon D’Or at 18 is an unbelievable achievement, I just wish we could all enjoy this phenomenal player without feeling like he’s being shoved down our throats, after all, I’m sure he’ll win it, if not this year maybe the next…
