Barça’s starboys Cubarsí and Yamal play with mentality of finest veterans
At the end of Barcelona’s 1-0 win over Real Mallorca this weekend, the best two players on the pitch put their arms around each other’s shoulders and walked towards the end of Montjuic where Antonio Rebollo’s arrow once lit the Olympic flame. Wearing 33 and 27, one is a defender, the other a forward, both just a couple of kids having a laugh. Waiting for them beneath the torch and way across the track were the fans who had spent the night singing their names, holding on to a new hope. Pau Cubarsí Paredes and Lamine Yamal Nasraoui Ebana were born in Estanyol and Esplugues, Catalonia, and they are younger than Robert Lewandowski. Put together.
Cubarsí has just turned 17, Yamal is 16 and on a cold night they led Barcelona to victory and back to the light. At one end, Cubarsí had done battle with the Canadian Cyle Larin and the Kosovan Vedat Muriqi. The latter a man whose coach calls him “a big, ugly beast” and a 6ft 4in striker you’d “cross the street to avoid”. The teenager took on “two towers” in Xavi’s words, and had come out on top. At the other end, Yamal had crashed one shot against the bar that would have won it and then struck another that actually did. It came from nowhere, a goal so good they celebrated it twice: first when it curled in, then when it was played back on the screen, not so much a roar but an “Oh!” which was even more eloquent. Did you see that?!
The Mallorca manager, Javier Aguirre, certainly had. His team had done alright, he said, “until the kid comes along, sticks it in the top corner, and … swallow it. When a goal like that goes in, all you can do is applaud”. Receiving near the box, playing to Lewandowski, there were four men in front of Yamal when he got it back again and, according to the computer, only a 2% chance of scoring. But, carrying the ball into the area, he forced the defenders towards their goal, put the brakes on, cut back away from Dani Rodríguez, and then curled it into the far corner. So fast, so precise that Predrag Rajkovic didn’t move.
Yamal leapt over the advertising boards to the wide space behind, teammates chasing, fans clambering down the stands towards him, and then he turned to the camera and gestured 3-0-4 with his fingers – the postcode for Rocafonda, the neighbourhood in Mataró where he was brought up. His mother is from Equatorial Guinea, his father is from Morocco; not long ago he was fined €546 for throwing eggs at a stall set up in the neighbourhood by the far-right party VOX. Yamal joined Barcelona at six and although he was quick and skilful, they admit they did not think he was that special.
He became the youngest footballer ever to play for Barcelona’s first team at 15 years old. A week later he became the youngest ever to play for their second team. He made his Spain debut at 16 years and 57 days – and scored. “He surprises you every day,” said the Spain coach, Luis de la Fuente. He is the youngest goal scorer in La Liga history. This week, he scored his fourth, twice as many as anyone else ever at his age. It was, El Mundo Deportivo said, a Laminazo: Mallorca had been Lamined. They called him magical. El País called him a genius, which was lucky, because Barcelona were not up to much.
They had needed him and Cubarsí, a team with only one actual midfielder in it saved by the teenagers at each end of the pitch. “Only Lamine could rescue Barcelona from the slaughter house,” said El Periódico. Sport’s pleading cover put it simply: “Don’t get a cold, Lamine”. In La Vanguardia, on the week when the creator of Dragon Ball, Akira Toriyama, died, Carles Ruipérezwas likening him to Son Goku, the main protagonist of the manga. “The hopes of humanity in the hands of a kid.”
No pressure, then, eh. Yamal, let’s say this again, is 16. Can’t drink, can’t drive, can’t smoke, can’t vote, can bend the ball into the top corner. It is a cliche, sure, but it is not surprising so many are asking what you were doing at 16, because it sure was not belting one in the top corner for Barcelona. When Yamal was born, Lewandowski was already top scorer in Poland’s third division. He was two when Spain won the World Cup. On Friday he was man? of the match, sponsored by a beer. Non-alcoholic, admittedly, but still. Barcelona’s best player, upon whose shoulders all this is being loaded, is in the forth year at school, has braces on his teeth, a sprinkling of spots on his skin and lives at La Masia.
Asked what Yamal’s target should be this season, the former striker Bojan Krkić who now works with the club’s sporting directorate, genuinely said: to pass his exams and not to be held back at school.
Krkić was once declared the new Lionel Messi. As the youngest goalscorer in the club’s history until Yamal came along and a kid who suffered anxiety attacks as a teenager, he knows about the pressure, and that’s just one pitfall. The youngest goalscorer in La Liga history until now was Fabrice Olinga; it was the only La Liga goal he ever got. Ansu Fati, Barcelona’s last great hope, is at Brighton, trying to resurrect a career that risks being destroyed by injury. Although not a youth team product, Pedri was perhaps the best player at the Euros in 2021, went to the Olympics and seems to have been paying for it ever since, never truly finding continuity. Gavi, a 19-year-old veteran who has played 111 first team games, plus 27 more for Spain, has suffered a serious knee injury.
No wonder the excitement comes with a hint of fear. A request: can this good thing please last? They say patience is a virtue but football does not have the time, and nor do the rest of us. If this is not the ideal moment to get a chance in the first team, it is often precisely the reason why those chances appear. Kids like Yamal, Cubarsí and the 17-year-old Marc Guiu, who scored 33 seconds into his debut and started Friday’s game up front, make it to the first team because the first team needs them. Yamal has played every league game this season, starting 14 of them. Cubarsí, who made his debut at 16, has now started seven in a row.
For all the fear, the excitement is inevitable, and this is not just hype. These boys, literal kids, really are special. Does stopping them, slowing them down, really help either? Especially when there is a maturity about them, a readiness. When this might just be real, when those who know, know. Another wonderful display on Friday evening – a combination of character and quality, every decision right, winning possession 14 times and not losing it once – led to Xavi talking about Cubarsí’s intelligence and “hierarchy”, describing him as “spectacular”; “he doesn’t look like he’s seventeen,” the coach said.
“The pressure is enormous and not many people can handle it and it is even harder with social media. You can’t escape it. Let’s see if mentally they can manage 10 or 12 years,” Lewandowski said, and yet he added: “it’s been a long time since I saw a centre back, especially at this age, who can pass like this and play with such calmness. And the best thing of all is that he is a great person too.”
The centre-back Iñigo Martínez called Yamal “differential”,saying: “there are few players with that talent and we have to look after him because he’s very young.” When he joined the national team, the captain, Álvaro Morata, said it was like he was 27 or 28; “it is incredible: when I was sixteen my head was all over the place.” As for Aguirre? This weekend he called him a rat. And, yes, that is a good thing: scurrying and unstoppable. “I remember seeing Messi when he was a juvenil, 21 years ago now, and you could see it immediately. He was like wheeee, a rat,” the Mallorca manager said. “And it looks like Lamine is a rat too, the cheeky bastard.”
“It’s never good to compare anyone to Messi, because everyone who gets compared to Messi ends up losing,” Xavi said. “But there are flashes of Messi because he’s left footed and comes inside. He’s special, different, and he can mark an era at the club.”
Talking points
• There were a couple of questions and then it went quiet in the press conference room at Mendizorroza. “That’s it?” asked the Alaves manager Luis García, smiling. “Bloody hell, the days we lose you kill me.” This time they had won 1-0 against Rayo Vallecano thanks to a lovely scooped finish from AndoniGorosabel, but when the third question did come and it asked what percentage chance García gave them of survival, he replied: “None. You have to continue, continue, continue. In the final weeks of the season everything gets very close.” Things though do look good: the win took Alaves up to thirteenth, 10 points clear of relegation. It also left Rayo even closer to the edge. That is 10 games without a win now, just one victory in 18, and they are only four points off the drop.
• “I can’t say anything because words don’t talk, facts talk,” Diego Simeone said, and the facts are Atlético Madrid are absolutely awful away from home, so bad it’s baffling. “The problem is me: there’s something in me that doesn’t wake up the players,” the coach said. The only team to have beaten Real Madrid became the first to lose to Cádiz in six months, beaten 2-0 on Saturday. Atlético have collected 40 of 42 points at home – only Getafe took anything off them with a 3-3 draw – and just 15 of 42 away. They have only won one of their last nine games on the road, leaving them fourteen off the top, and leaving Athletic right behind them, a genuine threat for the final Champions League place. “At a team like Atlético, this can’t happen,” Koke said.
• But that is their story. Much more significant was Cádiz’s, for whom things are getting a better, a little bit of hope appearing with two goals from Juanmi. “We needed this like a person needs to eat,” the striker said. “Cádiz won’t surrender.” the coach Mauricio Pellegrino added: “The team was progressing and this confirms our climb. The most important thing for me is that the boys feel that they can win games.”
• Hugo Duro (also known as ‘Hugo Hard’) did it again, lifting a glorious shot over David Soria to give Valencia a 1-0 win over Getafe.
• Sadiq scored. Silva scored. Real Sociedad won. 3-2 at Granada.
• Girona aren’t going to win the league but they aren’t going to give up either. An impressive 2-0 win over Osasuna keeps them second, which doesn’t sound like much any more but it really is.
• The weekend’s best game was at the Benito Villamarín, where Hernandez Hernandez, the referee so bad they named him twice, handed out four yellow cards in about 10 seconds, sending off Chimy Ávila and Alberto Moreno – neither of whom behaved that bad but neither of whom behaved that well either. Not that it ruined a belting game. Betis missing a glorious chance to make it 3-2 only for Villarreal to actually do so within seconds. Villarreal got it back, Alberto Moreno