As in response to my minor complaint concerning the first stage of the Cagey of the Arsenal semi-final against Paris Saint-Germain Champions League, the other semi-final, between Barcelona and Internazionale, was an austere counterpart. A 3-3 large open thriller, up there with the best matches with direct elimination of the first year of the last decade of the tournament, had almost too much action to summarize. The goals came hard and quickly, and with a quality almost from another world, on both sides, and Inter particularly resisted a furious storm to choose its stains and return the tie in Italy for the second step.
This does not mean, however, that all objectives, or even all performance, have been created equal. If a six-goals’ masterpiece could be distilled until a player’s exploits, it was Wednesday’s match. This player was, as he has already been in the confrontations with big tickets and as it seems that it is for years to come, Lamine Yamal, the 17 -year -old winger in Barcelona (17!) Who is not only the best prospect in the world of a Mile; He is perhaps already the best player on the planet, a whirlwind of technical prowess and creativity that European football has not seen since, well, another teenager adapted to the colors of the same club.
Lamine obviously has a long way to go before being able to enter the goat conversation, it is striking that his only real peers to be as good as young people are Pelé and Diego Maradona. Likewise, while the amazing eruption of Lionel Messi occurred when he had a few years more than the Lamine, it is difficult to ignore the common points when he is confronted with another Blaugrana-The right right winger obsessed with the feet of which the ball seems to dance. Lamine is his own player, however, and comparisons with the club’s eternal talisman renders a bad service to the wonder that this literal child can produce.
His goal Wednesday was as important as it is miraculous. Lamine received the ball with his back on goal, rushing with the much larger Marcus Thuram, a scorer of an incredible rhythm 30 seconds after the match. The adolescent managed to go beyond the inter -striker longer to obtain space to turn around, still about 40 meters and with at least four internal players between him and the promised land. It doesn’t matter, however. Lamimine featured a movement to his left to reject Henrikh Mkhitaryan, then broke out in space behind him and in the box. Inter Defense collapsed on Lamine, its main strategy throughout the game, and yet surrounded by five White shirts, this form of dynamite in human found just enough space to whisk a lateral foot curler in front of everyone, including goalkeeper Yann Sommer, rooted in his place. The ball kissed the distant post and bounced.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cathbkc_q1w
For almost all the players on the planet, an objective of this nature, with his shocking club already shocking 2-0 at home, would be the highest point of their season, but Lamine Yamal has already proven, in a short time as a Barcelona player, that he can always one. It could be difficult to say that his next shooting attempt, which did not end with a goal, was better than an already amazing strike, but I’m going to argue anyway.
A few minutes later, Lamine received a pass outside the right corner of the box, with Federico Dimarco in a privileged position to protect it towards the key line and far from a dangerous position. Poor Dimarco had their hands full on Wednesday and came mainly for the worst against Lamine, never more than on this game. Lamimine slowed down the ball to let the runners enter the box, before deciding to do it itself, taking the ball at this same touch line diminco, stopping on a cent, forcing the Italian to slide out of the limits, then taking a touch to his left and drawing from an impossible angle. Impossible is nothing for Yamal, however, because this blow was to make money, and it took a fairly incredible reflex to summon (without the Swiss goalkeeper, the Inter may have lost this match of two or three goals) to simply push the ball on the transverse bar, an abundant explosion by the finger.
Although Lamine would no longer mark, his work rate and his flair on the right side constantly pushed the Inter back, which was good for Barcelona, because the Italian side struck deadly counterattacks, in particular in the second period, against the large maniac and sometimes suicidal line of the local team. (Mkhitaryan has really marked one of them, but it was deemed out of the length of toe. Do not deceive yourself: Inter deserves this draw, and perhaps even more.) The ability of Lamine to relieve the pressure and to constantly support forward, striking his brand life outside the boot crosses in the inter-force box to defend his lifetime. These trivelas did not come to glory, the disadvantage of the size of Barcelona most of them exposed on these crosses, but the Lamine was the engine which led the implacable research of this team of Barcelona for equalization.
Even when he did not touch the ball, he did the right step, the right call in the heat of the moment. For Barcelona’s third goal, Dani Olmo struck a low and hard corner to the edge of the box, a game of the training field that only works because of the threat of Lamine Yamal. While the ball shouted towards its dangerous feet, and an inter-defenseman immediately went to close the space, Lamine rather let him slide through his legs towards a pending raphinha, which had enough space to unclog a crier which struck the transverse bar and at the back of Sommer for a cruel goal.
Despite the dizzying quantity of action at both ends of the field on Wednesday, it is difficult to watch the game and see something other than the Lamine. Denzel Dumfrie d’A Inter was named the man of the match, and any other day, against any other opponent, it would have been logical; The Dutch wing has set up the opening of Thuram and marked twice in Corners, the other arena where Inter’s physical superiority was most shown. And yet, I bet that when someone returns to this match, although it is almost all of the 90 minutes, it will not be dumfries who slips on the defenders of Barcelona who comes to mind. It will also not be Raphinha’s rocket, or even her head helping the head perfectly weighted for the equalizer of Ferran Torres at 2-2.
No, the game will be considered another first chapter of what promises to be a long column of the genius of Lamine. With the repeated warning that he is not even old enough to drink legally in Spain, which Lamine has often exposed and proven definitively during his 100e appearance for Barcelona as a senior – “senior” player feels like an improper term, given his age; Rather, let’s go with “first team” – is that it is the center of the club’s ambitions, and that it should be the center of the attention of the world of football. If the semi-final of last summer euros was his arrival on the world stage, Wednesday’s match was confirmation of his celebrity. Messi may be gone, and Lamine is not quite a replacement as for type, but the quality he overturns, and the fear he evokes in opponents, even those who have effective game plants to submerge him each time he touches the ball, are up there with the best. If there is one thing that the individual mastery of Wednesday showed, it is that Lamine Yamal could make this type of brilliance banal.
