Lamine Yamal agrees with Xavi again: choose well

Lamine Yamal, winger of FC Barcelona, ​​broke precocity records again, this time with the Spanish team. The culé youth player has become debutante and the Youngest scorer in the history of ‘La Roja’ by combining both merits in just 16 years and 57 days. His personal performance in a qualifying match for the Euro Cup in Georgia also confirmed what his coach at Barça, Xavi Hernández, always highlights about his game whenever he is asked about great footballers: his surprising that maturity when it comes to interpretation. what each play needs. After coming on in the 43rd minute of the game, replacing Dani Olmo, Yamal signed two actions that confirmed the profile that his coach at Barça had created for him: his goal and a pass that should have been the same, once obtained of the finisher. successful, his first assist to the national team.

At the end of August, after his brilliant performance at La Cerámica to help secure Barça’s comeback against Villarreal, Xavi described what in his opinion was Yamal’s best virtue, especially in a footballer still in his youth . “Expectations are very high for him that’s why he started, not because of the coach’s whim. Lamine is differential because he is smart, he makes good choices and above all, his decision making is almost always right, that is the most important thing. in football, and many times that this is the best… all this at the age of 16,” he described.

The debut of Lamine Yamal with the help of Luis de la Fuente with the senior team confirmed the diagnosis of the Barça coach to collaborate in the victory of ‘the red’ against Georgia. Two plays compressed into one minute are a perfect summary of that choice “always right” which, until now, is the one that gets the most attention from a footballer who is, so young, at an almost unnatural age. In the 74th minute, Lamine Yamal scored his first goal with the national team, which was ahead of Barça, by connecting first and without stopping to control the ball with a wonderful low cross by Nico Williams from left end. Yamal had a left-footed shot to prevent the Georgian defense from blocking his shot. Joselu cleverly opened his legs, allowing the ball to pass to facilitate Yamal’s scoring debut, just a minute into the game’s return when the Barça winger delivered an excellent pass worthy of a goal to the Real Madrid forward. From the right, Yamal put in a low ball and there was just the right amount of tension for Joselu to connect a shot in a clear position to score. It’s a narrow goal because of the responsibility of the graduate, but because of its quality it could be Lamine Yamal’s first assist in ‘red’.

Lamine Yamal has an earlier debut ahead of him in other senior national teams, as did Martin Odegaard (he lined out for Norway aged 15 years, 11 months and eight days in August 2014) and Stephen Appiah made his debut in Sierra Leone in 1995 at the age of 14 years and 322 days. In the under-15s, the FI(FA) has made eleven debuts in lower-ranked teams.

Lamine Yamal became the earliest scorer to score a goal in the qualifying phase for the Euro Cup, breaking Gareth Bale’s mark in Wales: the former Madrid player scored when he was 17 years and 83 days old. Opta has announced that, according to its data, Lamine Yamal is the third youngest player in history to score for a European team. He was preceded by two footballers who accomplished his feat more than a century ago: the Northern Irishman Sam Johnston in 1882 at the age of 15 years and 160 days, and the Hungarian Jozsef Horvath, in 1906, at aged 16 years and 12 days.