Lamine Yamal: ‘Football is mechanised but players like me have that special spark’
Lamine Yamal said he wanted to keep playing in the World Cup final in New Jersey on 19 July, describing the match as something he was enjoying rather than fearing. The Spain and Barcelona wonderkid, who has won both the European Championship and the World Cup, spoke from an office in Las Rozas where a Spain keyring hung from the door and a second star adorned his shirt.
Born in Mataró and raised in Rocafonda, Yamal is the son of Mounir and Sheila and carries early fame that began at 13; he turned 17 the day before the Euro 2024 final and 19 the day before the World Cup semi-final. He sat in a first-floor office surrounded by tactics boards and stats sheets, with crates loaded for London visible in the corridor.
Yamal recounted the pivotal sequence in the final after Enzo Fernández was sent off in the third minute of second-half stoppage time while the score remained 0-0, and then the ball came to his feet on 106 minutes. “We knew it was impossible they would score, and with the ball against 10, very difficult for us not to,” he said, adding that he had been thinking about that moment for some time.
Explaining his approach to defenders, Yamal said: “Football is mechanised but there are players like me, Pedri, many others, who have that special spark. There’s a typical Neymar move when he stops, fakes, goes the other way: I watched so many videos of him. I try to play with opponents, ensure they can’t mechanise me, don’t know where I’m going.” He described a tactical sequence when Alexis Mac Allister came across to close him down and he deliberately carried the ball slower so Pedro Porro could arrive behind him.
That small space from Porro’s cross allowed Nico Williams to head the ball back and Ferran Torres, who had struggled during the tournament, to score. “We knew Ferran needed it,” Yamal said, then laughed: “Well, everyone needs a goal in a World Cup final. If Unai Simón had scored, great. When it goes in, it’s spectacular, you feel you’re champions. You can’t explain the emotion. All I wanted was to keep playing. I never thought: ‘They might equalise’. There was a small push, a chance [Pau] Cubarsí cleared, but I was enjoying it.”
Small personal mementos and moments remain important to him: the mini trophy is at his mother’s house, he gave the Lego trophy to his father but his little brother Keyne broke it, and at the final whistle he embraced Lionel Messi. “I said thank you for everything you gave football. I don’t do things to look nice for the photo; that came from inside,” he said, and recalled asking his father not to share a bathtub picture that prompted inevitable comparisons to Messi.
Yamal noted the scale of his achievements and the expectations placed on him: “No one had ever won a Euros and a World Cup younger, at 19 years and six days.” Luis de la Fuente likened him to Salvador Dalí and Michelangelo, calling him a genius, and Yamal spoke about the Ballon d’Or: “Being completely honest, it’s not just this year I’ve been at a Ballon d’Or [winning] level, but longer. Everyone knows that; they know I am differential,” he said, adding: “I just have to win, win, win, and there will be a time when there’s no debate.”
On upbringing, expectation and responsibility he was candid: “Well, it depends how you’re brought up. I will never say: ‘Who are you? I won the World Cup.’ Only stupid people would do that. I know that football is 0.000001% of life.” He described family hardship and what it removed: “I saw my mum struggle so that I could play football. I’ve seen my dad go round the streets collecting scrap metal so I could eat. That’s fear. Now if I had a son, I could look after him. If my mum or my dad need anything, I can help. I don’t have that fear now and that’s the only fear I could have in life.”
In the corridor outside his office there were crates loaded for London.