Want to see jaws drop? Ask soccer fans about Lamine Yamal, the 18-year-old Spanish sensation. Better yet, watch him play — ideally in person next summer when the World Cup comes to North America. That tournament, whose draw will be held in Washington, D.C., may be a farewell for Lionel Messi, but it will also showcase Lamine, long touted as a generational talent and Messi’s heir by some. He’s not yet licensed to drive or finished with braces. Already, though, the world — like the ball he dribbles — is at his feet.
Summer 2024 in Munich: the Euros semifinal that helped catapult Spain past France and toward the European title also vaulted Lamine from promising teen to global star. Now 18, he’s a star winger for FC Barcelona. He doesn’t just score; he improvises, eludes defenders with balletic feints and spins, and produces moments that leave crowds gasping.
“If I were a fullback, I wouldn’t like it if a player much better than me kept getting away,” Lamine says with a grin. “I’d ask them ‘please slow down a little,’ otherwise my friends would make memes about it.” Asked about his soccer superpower, he answers: “I think I would like to brighten people’s day. If someone is sad they can come to a game, watch me and feel better, so they go home happier than before.”
Having finished second in the Ballon d’Or, Lamine has immense currency with his generation and has enchanted purists like Ray Hudson, the former player and broadcaster. “He’s an absolute uncut diamond,” Hudson says. “There’s times I’ve been watchin’ him where I could swear that he’s thrown his shadow the wrong way. The defenders are just bewitched.” Hudson likens watching him to observing a dragonfly — quick, elusive, intoxicating. “Once Yamal sends you the wrong way with that wonderful feign, the defender has to pay to get back into the stadium.”
The ball is more than a sphere to him; he calls it his first love. Asked if he talks to the ball, he laughs: “No, I’m not that crazy, but it could happen. I’d probably ask it to marry me and to have lots of kids.”
Lamine’s story begins in Rocafonda, a struggling North African immigrant neighborhood north of Barcelona. Born in Spain to a Moroccan father and an Equatorial Guinean mother, he learned his craft on a concrete slab by the Mediterranean — a makeshift pitch whose steps double as bleachers. Graffiti there reads: “In the neighborhood of Rocafonda, more Lamine Yamals and fewer evictions.” The uncertainty of that life, he says, was more stressful than playing for Barça. “No one knew whether they would become a soccer player, an architect, a painter, or find a job,” he recalls. After he scores, he often acknowledges his old neighborhood; his “304” gesture references the local zip code, 08304.
His uncle Abdul runs the LY 304 Café a few blocks from the pitch. “Lamine was very savvy as a child, doing everything on his own,” Abdul says. “He has the maturity of a 25- or 30-year-old.” Barcelona scouts spotted him at six; he took the train to La Masia, Barça’s famed academy, and stood out from the start. By 15 he made his pro debut — the youngest player in Barça’s 126-year history. Two years later, with a dye job and a string of standout performances, he’s lived up to the promise.
When the game tightens, Lamine says he wants to “make magic.” He remembers the small crowds on neighborhood walls and the thrill of making them jump to their feet. “I like it,” he says when asked whether he minds being a star. “In fact, I like it.”
Barcelona’s culture of creativity suits him. Still, comparisons to Messi are inevitable. He answers them directly and respectfully: “I respect him for what he’s been, for what he is to soccer. If we ever meet on a soccer field, there’ll be mutual respect. He’s the best in history. I don’t want to be Messi — I want to follow my own path.”
The Messi-Lamine link goes back further than fans realize. A 2007 photo by Joan Monfort shows a 20-year-old Messi posing with a baby in a UNICEF calendar; that baby was Lamine. Monfort calls the coincidence “like winning the lottery.”
Fast-forward less than 18 years: Lamine’s family — including his Moroccan grandmother — watched as he signed a Barcelona contract widely reported at around $30 million a season and was given the No. 10 shirt Messi once wore. Asked whether life is coming too fast, he answers with an analogy: if you’re offered to be the boss at your job, would you say no? “Am I going too fast? So that’s my answer.”
Observers praise his rare gifts but caution about pitfalls: injuries, personal issues, or family troubles. “We’ll see it on the pitch, because the green doesn’t lie,” Hudson says. When asked who in Lamine’s circle can say “no” to him, he replies that everyone does — but he listens to his mother most.
Can he ever be a normal 18-year-old? “I always try to find the simplest things to do, like play video games or spend time with my brother. But I do believe I’ll never be a normal 18-year-old, because people don’t see me as normal, and I won’t be able to act that way.”
He’s made braces — “los brackets” — part of his signature. Asked whether the braces come off before the World Cup, he jokes he’ll have to call his dentist, then decides, “I’ll leave them on, then.” “I look good with brackets,” he adds, laughing.
With or without braces, Lamine and Spain will be among the World Cup favorites. Asked plainly whether Spain wins the World Cup, his single-word reply in English: “Yes.”
Produced by Draggan Mihailovich and Nathalie Sommer. Field producer Sabina Castelfranco. Associate producer Emily Cameron. Broadcast associate Mimi Lamarre. Edited by Warren Lustig. Special thanks to Guillem Balagué.
