Lamine Yamal, the best young player in the world

This Monday, before flying to Paris to get his Kopa prize, Lamine Yamal (17) went to the dentist: he wanted the tiny blue and scarlet stars removed from his teeth. braces which, playfully, he had shown to the Bernabéu public the other Saturday, in the classic.

(Playful in the face of those who offended him: while insults rained down on him, when parents and children insulted him, Lamine Yamal had simply smiled, how playful he is.)

And that’s how the boy appeared yesterday, sort of the leader of the Dream Teen (that’s what Joanjo Pallàs baptized him): he did it without the playful little stars on his mouth, showing a cleaner smile, which doesn’t clean at all, well The smile with orthodontics has its gray spots, and the braces will remain there for a few months, correcting the teeth of this young man who, at least when he takes the field, behaves like an adult.

On the stage of the Théâtre du Châtelet, we have seen Lamine Yamal in a short, wide-lapel, double-breasted jacket, and with a black shirt and bow tie and loafers.

We have seen a teenager dressed as an older man, which is what Lamine Yamal looks like when he plays football, to receive the trophy for the best young man, a distinction that he only collected this Monday and will never collect again, since the Kopa award is never repeated.

(And since it was established, in 2018, it has been picked up by Mbappé, De Ligt, Pedri, Gavi and Bellingham, the latter during the last year).

–When you have fun is when you play better –he said.

And also:

–It goes for my father, my mother and my grandmother, and for the players, the fans, the coaches who have helped me, for Luis (De la Fuente), Xavi (Hernández) and Hansi (Flick), who have been with me.

(Incidentally, Lamine Yamal has joined the list of the ten best footballers of the year).

And while the teenager was talking, this chronicler began to wonder what atmosphere there would be at that time in the Bar Cafeteria LY 304 in Rocafonda, the bar that his paternal family has opened in Mataró and in whose 80 m2 – Anaïs Martí told us on Sunday – there are numerous the white t-shirts, above the blue ones, because the human being is a bomb of contradictions.

In the footsteps of the phenomenon?

When asked if he saw himself surpassing Ronaldo’s record, Ballon d’Or winner at 21, Lamine Yamal only said: ‘No’

Among those diners at the Rocafonda cafeteria there were now none of his relatives, since most of them (and among them his father, Mounir Nasraoui; his mother, Sheila Ebana, and his little brother, Keyne, all of them dressed in Dolce & Gabanna ) had boarded the plane and disembarked at the Parisian Châtelet to see his adult child, a child who matures quickly (at least, on the playing field), so much so that he has already collected a prize that he will never collect again because , as we just wrote, is getting older.

“Visit Barça and the capital of 304,” Lamine Yamal said goodbye, paying tribute to his Rocafonda, after collecting the trophy from the hands of Ruud Gullit, a wonderful footballer who won the Ballon d’Or (1987) when he sported Bob Marley-style braids and who today He shows off his shaved head.

Aesthetics

Before flying to Paris, Lamine Yamal visited the dentist: he wanted the little stars removed from his braces

And so the glorious journey opens and closes teenager of a footballer who, now, has entered the realm of mature players.

–When they told me that Ronaldo (the phenomenon) collected a Ballon d’Or at the age of 21 years, three months and one day, it seemed incredible to me – he said.

–Do you see yourself overcoming it? –Drogba asked him.

“No,” he replied, somewhat overcome by the problems with the microphone (they had provided a translator in French) and the magnitude of the stage. But I’m going for it as soon as possible.

How quickly life escapes us, we in our fifties experience it in our flesh: when we were children, those soccer geniuses were mature gentlemen.

Today, the geniuses could be our children.