Lamine Yamal: truly generational

The definitive SCOUTED50 profile.

SCOUTED50 is our collection of the fifty young talents we believe are best positioned to break into the mainstream during 2023/24. Throughout the season, we’ll be detailing all fifty in definitive profiles.

The full list can be read here. This profile focuses on Barcelona’s latest La Masia prodigy, Lamine Yamal.

This profile was produced as part of a commercial collaboration with SkillCorner, SCOUTED’s official data partner. SkillCorner’s tracking and performance data is used by more than 150 of the world’s biggest clubs, leagues and confederations. Learn more.

All stats correct as of 15/02/2024 unless otherwise noted.

Barcelona are in a spot of bother. After a surprising La Liga triumph last year, the club’s financial difficulties, long-documented since the departure of Lionel Messi, are beginning to impact how they operate in the transfer market.

There are no easy or quick fixes. Even registering players, such as the newly acquired Vitor Roque, is proving difficult.

Nonetheless, Barcelona have a trump card: the feted La Masia academy. Now, when they need it most, the club’s most prized asset is delivering in spades.

It began with Gavi in 2021/22, but his emergence was just the start. This year, La Masia has gifted the senior squad with more premium additions: Fermín López, Pau Cubarsí, Héctor Fort, and of course, Lamine Yamal.

While all have been excellent assets for the first team, the youngest of the group — Yamal — has had the biggest impact. More than 1,700 minutes of impact, in fact, as the new focal point of the Barcelona attack.

It could not have come at a better time. Periodic injuries, first to Raphinha, and now Ferran Torres and João Félix, have left Barcelona very light in attacking depth.

The result? Yamal is now almost indispensable. He has played 90 minutes in each of the club’s last five La Liga matches, taking on more and more responsibility in the process.

He also found himself called up to the Spanish national team in late 2023, becoming his nation’s youngest goal scorer in the process. The phrase ‘meteoric rise’ has never been more apt.

But in all honesty, if you were following Yamal’s progress at youth level, you could see it coming. The most obvious glimpses came at the Under-17 Euros in 2023, in which he was by far the tournament’s most dominant player. And it wasn’t through speed, or physical dominance, but finesse - and an unbelievably beautiful ball-striking capability.

In this piece from earlier in the season, I talked a lot about the importance of ball-striking in increasing the portability of his game from youth to senior football. It’s worth a read before we get stuck further into this profile and some of the SkillCorner metrics that will further contextualise his progress at senior level, as that piece more closely micro-analyses some aspects of his game than I will do here.

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Lamine Yamal might not be the superstar we expect

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With instability rife, Xavi’s tenure on a ticking clock and the financial future of the club uncertain, Barcelona will will find one question as pressing as any: just how good can Yamal be? If anything could put Catalan minds at ease, it’s knowing they have a superstar laying in wait.

Regardless of the answer to that question, there’s little doubt Yamal will be playing at the top level for a very, very long time. Here, using bespoke SkillCorner data, I set out to examine why and how he reached these heights so quickly.

But then something happened. At one point during the research for this piece, I had to stop to make sure I hadn’t broken something. The numbers tell a story typical of a player thrown into the deep end early - until they don’t. Until they reveal something extraordinary.

We have to be careful where and how we use the word ‘generational’. But there’s a secret hiding in these numbers that make its use apt to describe Lamine Yamal.

We have a little ways to get there.