“Lamine Yamal is impressive; one of those talents that appear once every 50 years,” Inter boss Simone Inzaghi gushed after somehow escaping from Barcelona with a 3-3 draw.
“That’s why I have to praise my team a lot.”
At times, it was Yamal vs Inter. A one-man -boy masterclass of poise, pace and precision that the Italians had no answer for.
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They just stuck more white shirts on him to try to quell the tide, but that tactic merely freed up space elsewhere for what, during a 20-minute spell towards the end of the first half, was a bombardment from all angles.
Inter got a result thanks to some remarkable finishing prowess and Barca’s defence being about as solid as a melted sieve, but the star of the night was undoubtedly Yamal.
He was a doubt to start the game just a few minutes before kick-off, feeling his groin during the warm-up and heading down the tunnel early
The will-he-won’t-he vacuum of information had echoes of Brazilian Ronaldo before the 1998 World Cup, but Yamal, who had “noticed something strange“, was there in the line-up as the players headed out on the pitch, to the relief of Barcelona fans and all neutrals, but to the despair of Inter.
Within three minutes, with Inter having taken a shock early lead, Yamal began attempting to prise their defence apart.
The absence of master poacher Robert Lewandowski was felt as a come-and-get-me ball across the face of the goal went unrewarded.
Federico Dimarco was the man handed the unenviable task of attempting to mark Yamal – akin to asking someone to catch a cloud in a fishing net.
This was not a one-man job, so Henrikh Mkhitaryan, aged 36, was asked to help. It did not go well.
The pair’s strategy for trying to stop Yamal appeared to be to stand still and attempt to guess which direction he would zoom off in. Fifty-fifty chance, right?
On this occasion, Yamal bent the ball into the box with the outside of his left foot, but it was cleared.
Inter then stunned the hosts with a second goal, serving to light a fire under Yamal. He picked the ball up here in the 24th minute and, yes, scored a goal.
How?
Inter had sat in two perfectly acceptable banks of four to protect their two-goal advantage, but Yamal cared not for defensive structures.
He embarked on a one-man heist of the ball, carrying it from some 35 yards from goal, skipping past the helpless Mkhitaryan, a man more than double Yamal’s age…
The 17-year-old showed Lionel Messi-esque elasticity, precision and vision…
Slaloming into a shooting position, surrounded by players but with the presence of mind to pause briefly and thread a bending shot through a crowded mass of bodies towards the corner…
The entire thing lasted six seconds, which wasn’t long enough for goalkeeper Yann Sommer to anticipate what was happening. He could only gawp at Yamal’s shot as it hit the net.
“I have never seen a player like Yamal in the last eight or nine years,” Inzaghi told Amazon Prime. “We had to triple him and obviously, spaces opened up elsewhere.”
They did, but the ball kept coming back to the 17-year-old.
This time, with Dimarco and Mkhitaryan slightly upfield, Hakan Calhanoglu and Alessandro Bastoni were the ones who failed to block Yamal, whose right-footed ball into an ideal shooting position again doesn’t bear fruit.
Dimarco and Mkhitaryan didn’t even attempt to challenge next time…
And this time, an inswinging cross with his left foot, again right on the money, is wasted.
Fed up with trying to set up goals for his ungrateful team-mates, Yamal again decided to go it alone, squaring up Dimarco on the edge of the area…
And sending him out to get oat lattes for the office…
Count them, one, two, three, four, five outfield Inter players can only watch as Yamal attempts to score from a tight angle…
But Sommer reacted in time to push the ball onto the bar. It was almost another wondergoal.
Yamal touched the ball 102 times, according to WhoScored, the kind of number you would expect from a tempo-setting defensive midfielder. Barca just kept feeding him and he kept attempting to return the favour…
Another cute cross…
Again, the lofty Lewandowski would have gobbled it up, but another teasing ball into the box went begging.
Two players marking Yamal were no longer sufficient, nor were humans in general. Inter needed automated tracking drones to locate Yamal.
He was clearly enjoying himself. With the grace of a ballet dancer, he would swish past players for fun…
And unleashed a Zinedine Zidane-style pirouette on an unsuspecting Marcus Thuram…
It was perfection in its enactment…
And left Thuram feeling like it was 4am in Ibiza: confused, disorientated and not knowing which direction was home.
There was time for one more bamboozling of an Inter defence who admittedly got their act together for the second half, cutting out the supply line to Yamal and denying him space.
They allowed him freedom 12 yards from goal here though…
Yamal appeared to mis-time his shot and clip it at an unusual angle…
It still hit the bar, with Sommer again unmoved. Did he mean it? We mere mortals have no right to judge.
This was, remarkably, Yamal’s 100th appearance in a Barcelona shirt and after the match, his team-mates gathered to present him with a commemorative shirt.
Yamal holds a shirt to commemorate his 100th appearance for Barcelona’s first team (Michael Regan – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)
He didn’t seem that fussed. He has more important things to achieve, such as becoming one of the greatest players to have kicked a football. He’s well on his way.
(Top photo: Joan Valls/Urbanandsport/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
This news was originally published on this post .
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