Can Lamine Yamal be one of soccer’s best ever: Barcelona’s teenager is already putting up eye-popping numbers

Lamine Yamal probably isn’t the best player in the world. That that needs saying about any footballer before his 18th birthday speaks to the ludicrous talent of this particular prodigy. The business end of the season is fast approaching, in those weeks ahead it may be that Yamal at the very least establishes himself among the contenders for the post-Lionel Messi crown.

At any age, Yamal’s output this season would be intimidatingly excellent. In La Liga in particular, he stands out as one of its outstanding performers. His 12 assists leads nearest rival Raphinha by three and he also has an advantage over his team mate for expected assisted goals, which tracks the value of the chances he directly creates for team mates. When it comes to getting the ball into the most dangerous spots on the pitch, no one is doing so with Yamal’s frequency. He has 83 passes into the penalty area. Pedri in second place has 68. More goal creating actions than anyone else, more shooting creating ones too: the list goes on and on.

In short, there has been no better creator in the Spanish top flight this season than the 17-year-old. 

You could make a similarly compelling case when it comes to ball progression too. Yamal is critical in getting Barcelona into the areas where he weaves his magic, leading La Liga in successful take ons, second only to Vinicius Junior in carries both progressive and into the penalty area.

Then again, only a select few — this column among them — get giddy because Yamal ranks in the 99th percentile on so many statistics. What has so many others rubbing their eyeballs in disbelief is moments that belie his youth. It sometimes feels as if the boy from Rocafonda has found time to ingest all of football history such that he knows the right choice without having learned the way everyone else does: consistently making the wrong one.

Take his goal to add salt to Borussia Dortmund wounds in the 4-0 Champions League quarterfinal first leg win earlier this month. Played through by Raphinha, he seemed to instinctively understand that his heavy first touch would allow Ramy Bensebaini to whip the ball off his toes. There is no time to pull back and strike at goal while pushing the ball away from the covering full back would likely tighten up the angle and slow the attacking momentum.

In less time than it took you to read that, Yamal concluded that the best option was a flick of his toe, diverting the ball with such precision that it was all Gregor Kobel could do to stand in admiration. Again, 17 years old.

Then there are the slew of delicate chips to the back post and outside of the boot crosses, the pick of the latter a 40 yard pearler to hand Raphinha a prime scoring opportunity. There’s plenty more though, so many of them coming flying down the flank at full tilt. There are experienced professionals who haven’t once hit across the ball the way Yamal routinely does. The fact he does so also reflects a burgeoning understanding of what the opposition will and won’t give him. Everyone has seen that goal in the Euro 2024 semifinal. If he isn’t going to be allowed to shoot and is going to be shown down the line, he’ll still exploit his stronger foot.

After all of this you might wonder what exactly is hindering his Ballon d’Or case. For now at least, it’s the goals. A return of 14 in 47 games across all competitions is not to be sniffed at, certainly not when there’s 22 assists to go with them. However, his shot taking is the one spot where Yamal’s youth shines through. He has that particularly young winger quality of calling his shot whatever the situation — again… Euro 2024… you can understand why he backs himself — leaving him with an awful lot of efforts that are, ahem, optimistic. There’s a lot of small red dots in that graphic below.

There is no reason to assume that a player of his composure and rapid development won’t have ironed out this particular kink before too long. Most coaches will tell you it is a lot easier to coach bad shots out of a player’s game than to coach shots into a game. And at 4.19 shots worth 0.31 xG per 90 minutes, Yamal doesn’t need to be told to pull the trigger.

A few more goals, a few fewer bad shots, that’s really about it in terms of turning Yamal into a genuine best in the game attacker. It could be job done by the end of his teens. All of which rather leads to the questions that could well be asked of this player before too long — how does he compare to the all time greats of the game? Is he better at this age than Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo were?

The answer is unknowable. In his age 17 season Messi was watching on as Frank Rijkard’s Barcelona dominated La Liga. Cristiano Ronaldo wasn’t 18 until he caught the eye of Sir Alex Ferguson. Even those who broke through young like Kylian Mbappe and Wayne Rooney were at best excelling in flashes at this age. By the time he has turned 18 in July, Yamal might well have 5,000 La Liga minutes in the tank, 24 Champions League games, perhaps La Liga and Champions League winner’s medals to go alongside his prizes from Euro 2024.

If you want players who were achieving anything particularly comparable to Yamal at such a tender age, your best bet is to go digging through the early years of South American greats. Ronaldo Nazario was blitzing his way through defences in a Cruzeiro shirt, Diego Maradona earning the title El Pibe de Oro and Pele setting the records at major tournaments that Yamal would go on to match.

It will, of course, be the best part of two decades before it is at all clear whether Yamal belongs in the same historical conversation as those mentioned above. Though their careers were outstanding, Rooney and even to an extent Brazilian Ronaldo speak to the pitfalls that might hit a player with all the attributes. All of that is to say nothing for the strain that so many minutes would place on any player’s body at such an early age.

It is one thing to be on the cusp of being the best player in the world at just 17 years of age, it is another to hold that title for a decade and a half as the true greats of the game did. At least Yamal has plenty of time on his side.