Why Lamine Yamal needs to be protected at all costs?

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DATE_FORMAT_LC5 1759

Lamine Yamal is not normal. What he’s been doing in the sport is not the norm, it will never be the norm, and it’s almost impossible to explain.

Yet another big match, yet another stellar performance. A stellar goal, a wonderful showing—there are no superlatives with which to explain what this 17-year-old has been doing.

And add to that that he’s been doing it while fasting for Ramadan, which is not easy, for the record.

It doesn’t matter—the boy keeps playing football like nobody else ever has at the age of 17. What gives?

His energy, dynamism, and boyish defiance in play—yet never without an exceptional sense of tactical responsibility—is proof that you can combine attractive playing elements in an era of excessive caution and calculated pragmatism.

Yamal doesn’t hesitate to try something new because he has full confidence in his ability to see it through. It’s one thing to have an outrageous idea, but it’s totally another to actually execute it. He is the embodiment of a young, unshackled, hyper-talented player.

He appears as a complete player at the age of 17, which seems impossible—almost illegal—but here he is, almost impossible to guard, doing everything right and winning matches both for his national team and his club.

What can you even say other than caution? There are reasons to believe that something like this won’t continue.

There have been players in the past who have done amazing things as teenagers, only to fizzle out later on.

Kylian Mbappé won France the World Cup as a teenager, though a few years older than Yamal was when he helped France win the Euros last summer. It seemed like he would never hit a wall, and yet he did. Life has a way of humbling even the greatest of people.

Time will tell whether Yamal truly hits a wall in any way. He hasn’t hit a wall this year. He has played 38 matches this season for his club and scored 13 goals. Those are stats that are not normal for a teenager like him. There is no metric by which it would appear normal.

So maybe he will be an outlier, or maybe he won’t. What Yamal has been doing so far with his tremendous career is making a lot of people fall in love with the game they grew up loving. It’s been many years since we’ve seen somebody play so carelessly and yet be so good.

It reminds us of the football we all used to play as kids—carefree, devoid of the tactical grip that has overshadowed the game in its most primal form.

In some ways, Yamal is saving football, but as the great manager Marcelo Bielsa said, protecting Yamal and kids like him is how we truly preserve the game and its future.

For if we lose what makes us love the game, we will be left with something hollow—something that is not the football we grew up loving and that would be the ultimate tragedy for any football fan.

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