Vast as the palette might be, for all the emotions that athletes experience in the course of competition, pity isn’t one that tends to stand out. But there was Lamine Yamal in Brussels last November, feeling genuinely sorry for the opponents he had just cooked.
In the 61st minute of a Champions League match, Yamal, the 18-year-old Barcelona winger, took a pass 20 or so yards in front of the goal. In a jag resembling a bit of slapstick comedy, he dribbled around, past and through a half dozen defenders, leaving them flat-footed in the grass, like garden gnomes.
It was a mismatch of skill, Yamal’s sumptuous talent pitted against athletes who were merely world class, not generationally elite. It was also a mismatch of age. Yamal celebrated by flashing his signature hand gesture and an incandescent smile, revealing his signature braces.
For Yamal, it recalled the goal he’d scored earlier in his career in a preseason game against FC Seoul. That one, too, triggered in Yamal pride for his feat, but also genuine compassion for the other guys.
De La Masia al mundo: Lamine Yamal 🪄 pic.twitter.com/FjhjCw3tWX
Yamal rehashed this all inside a television studio in Barcelona’s warehouse district. He was there to appear on 60 Minutes, and we spoke for nearly an hour. He was also there to shoot a commercial-slash-music video for Coca-Cola, based on “Jump,” Coke’s anthem for the 2026 World Cup.
— FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona_es) November 6, 2025
Just a few years ago, Yamal’s post-practice afternoons entailed playing FIFA with friends. Now he is FIFA. His Barça jerseys sell more briskly worldwide (reportedly 1.32 million in 2025) than those of any other player in the sport.
The story of Spain’s best young soccer player begins not in Iberia but in Africa. In 1990, Fatima Nasraoui snuck onto a bus in Morocco and crossed into Spain in the hope of building a better life.
A fine player in his day, Mounir had early designs of rearing his son as a soccer star. The young couple raised their boy in the town of Mataró (pop. 130,000) in the neighborhood of Rocafonda, a North African enclave a few blocks from the Mediterranean, a 45-minute drive north of Barcelona.
Mounir Nasraoui (right) said his son should’ve won last year’s Ballon d’Or award.
Mounir and Sheila divorced when their son was 3. (“Lamine Yamal Nasraoui Ebana” became just “Lamine Yamal.”) Both parents were active in his upbringing.
Yamal was also raised by Rocafonda. The neighborhood was once described by the Spanish daily newspaper El País as “forgotten, isolated and stigmatized,” but Yamal remembers it warmly.
On the other side of town, Lionel Messi was beginning his path to the GOAT pasture. And Yamal was getting noticed as well.
For Yamal, the manicured fields and wide-open spaces made it “soccer heaven.” Albeit with a hellish commute.
Yamal made his La Liga debut on April 29, 2023. At just 15 years, 291 days old, he was the youngest player ever to represent Barcelona’s first team.
Soccer commentator Ray Hudson—himself a teenage phenom for Newcastle in the ’70s—recalls watching Yamal play an early Champions League game against Inter Milan.
Lamine Yamal (19) has enraptured global audiences with his dazzling dribbling skills.
Barça had the foresight to lock up Yamal after turning down various offers—most notably a €250 million bid from Paris Saint-Germain.
Aware poachers were circling, the Spanish national team plugged a 16-year-old Yamal into a game against Georgia.
Yamal’s star turn came in the 2024 Euros. In short order, he became the youngest player ever to play in the tournament; to score a goal; to help his country win the event.
The day after his 17th birthday, he played in the biggest game of his young life.
As if eager to show that this was no fluke, back in La Liga Yamal resumed his precocious, ferocious play.
Lamine Yamal’s 3-0-4 celebration represents his neighborhood’s postal code.
— UEFA EURO (@EURO2024DE) July 21, 2024
Last fall, he narrowly lost out to PSG’s Ousmane Dembélé for the Ballon d’Or.
By official soccer rules these days, there comes a time in any discussion of Yamal that there must be a comparison to Messi, who also happens to be the hero of the previous World Cup.
Two different players, two different eras, two wildly different personas, Messi’s studied blandness versus Yamal’s irrepressible color.
Even before this came an unmatched moment of sports-greatness foreshadowing.
A 2007 photoshoot featuring Lionel Messi and Lamine Yamal has become a fan favorite.
With the caveat that trajectories change and sports careers are sinuous, let the record reflect: At 17, Messi had played in eight matches, scored a single goal and tallied zero assists.
The starkest differences between the two reside not in their play but in their modes of being.
Intensely shy, Messi has been strenuously unknowable off the pitch.
Para no dejar de verlo.
El 𝗴𝗼𝗹 𝗱𝗲 𝗟𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗬𝗮𝗺𝗮𝗹 al Espanyol nominado al Premio Puskas 2025.
LALIGAEASPORTS | LALIGAHighlights pic.twitter.com/wOCTb0IoaA
Yamal admits it can get to be a bit much.
Then again, he’s not normal.
The World Cup final will be held July 19, six days after Yamal turns 19.
— LALIGA (@LaLiga) November 13, 2025
He hopes that evening that Spain will hoist the real trophy.
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