It’s disgraceful to me that Lamine Yamal is suffering a tornado of recriminations after LaLiga‘s first Clásico of the season on Sunday — in which Barcelona were beaten 2-1 at Real Madrid — when the men in the dock, hanging their heads in shame, should actually be Gerard Piqué, Jorge Mendes, Dani Carvajal, Ibai Llanos and Hansi Flick.
In case you’re unfamiliar with the nasty, immature nonsense that erupted when Madrid battered Barça at the Bernabéu to the point where their performance merited a three- or four-goal victory, here’s a quick update.
On Friday, Lamine attended the buildup to a match in the Kings League — former Barça defender Piqué’s seven-a-side competition in which amateur footballers play alongside a smattering of ex-pros. It’s a gaudy spectacle made for social media, but it has budget.
At 18, Lamine’s maturing years have been lived inside the bubble of football, and so his preternatural intelligence and savoir-faire on the pitch, light years ahead of where they should be, contrast to the fact that off the pitch, he’s prone to all the same daftness any ordinary teenager would be. More so because he’s wealthy, and there are increasingly few people who’ll tell him he can’t do something.
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Piqué moved his King’s League ‘Clásico‘ from Sunday, when it would have clashed with the real one, to Friday. He persuaded Yamal not only to be president of the La Capital franchise — which would play against the team run by Piqué’s associate, streamer Ibai Llanos (a huge Madrid fan), but also to attend the game.
During some jokey prematch sparring that was streamed on YouTube, Lamine was asked whether he thought Ibai’s Porcinos (Piggies) team “is like Real Madrid,” and he responded by asking whether it was meant that Porcinos “steal and then complain.”
He was instantly asked by someone on the panel: “You mean Madrid ‘steal and complain…?” Lamine, immediately, put up his hands and said, “hold on there, just a minute …” It was a crystal-clear indication that he knew he might be putting his foot in it by saying something rude and unnecessary in public, and he was talking about his rival King’s League team — not, as such, the Madrid side he was going to face that Sunday. The implication about Los Blancos is there. It was an error and it was inflammatory, but this teenager who has been left brutally unprotected and used for his notoriety, immediately tried to walk it back.
Naturally, it became a talking point in the buildup to Madrid hosting Barcelona, with a flurry of accusatory articles about Lamine, his off-pitch flamboyance, his supposed change in character and this hot-button phrase. It was reported as fact that Lamine directly accused Madrid of ‘robbing and complaining,’ as if he turned up to a pre-Clásico livestream and deliberately made defamatory accusations about the team atop LaLiga. Although what he actually said was badly phrased, injurious and enough to irk Madridistas, there’s no question that the reporting deliberately added gasoline to the small flame, and with a whoosh, it became incendiary.
By the end of the Clásico, a 2-1 Madrid victory that took the home side five points clear of the reigning champions, Madrid captain Dani Carvajal could not restrain himself from heading over to Lamine and made a yapping gesture with his hand to suggest “you talk too much.”
What in Scotland we call a “rammy” breaks out — no punches are thrown, but several players on each side act like they want to be provoked into it. Peacemakers — Eduardo Camavinga, Aurélien Tchouaméni, Brahim Díaz and Ronald Araújo among them — held back the aggressors, bookings and a red card are administered, and even the cops decide their presence is needed to dampen things down.
In the 24 hours since the game, plenty of media coverage has pointed the finger of blame at Lamine. The mega-talented teenager only had an okay match — he’s still recovering from a groin injury — but he also provided a clear-cut chance for Jules Koundé who, had he scored as he should have done, would miraculously have tied the match at 2-2.
So, here’s a proper examination of where the blame lies.
I’ve lived in Spain longer than Lamine’s been alive. I can tell you that for 99.9999% of those years, neither Madrid nor Barcelona would, under any circumstances, have allowed their players to participate in a ‘mock-Clásico‘ event, let alone a globally famous teenage genius. An event where the basic idea was to drum-up viral attention, spark polemic and where the merest slip, of any kind, would be gleefully, not to say maliciously, reported by media who, themselves, are desperate to surf the selling power of soccer’s greatest fixture. Utterly inconceivable.
The biggest tranche of blame goes to Piqué. Let me tell you about the now world-famous, ultra-rich and gloriously successful serial winner for Barcelona, Manchester United and Spain.
As a teenager, he and Cesc Fàbregas — by Piqué’s own admission — used to go down from their posh part of the city, to Barceloneta by the seaside, and pinch the petrol caps off parked cars. As a teenager in Manchester, Piqué used a company of cowboys to install a satellite dish on the roof of his house. They hatched a criminal scheme by which they would wait a couple of days, steal their own dish back, get a call from Piqué that something was wrong, arrive at his house, point out to him that the dish had been stolen, re-sell him that same satellite hardware and, on repeat, charge him for the service and a ‘new’ dish.
Rank naivety and stupidity — something that no doubt embarrasses Piqué to this day. He knows the perils of being a high-profile, highly paid teenager. So what the hell was he thinking in exposing Lamine to this absolutely guaranteed own-goal exercise?
Piqué professes to love Barca — he once envisaged becoming club president. But instead of protecting the closest thing to Lionel Messi‘s genius that the club is ever likely to see, Piqué actively used Lamine as ‘Clásico-bait’ to arguably try and boost his show.
Ibai has already apologised for his part in exposing Lamine Yamal to this maelstrom saying “I share the blame.” But where was the immediate intervention by Piqué to call people at Madrid and let them know that he shared culpability, and that Lamine hadn’t gone out to insult Los Blancos? Not only did that not happen but Piqué, on Friday, stoked the fire by claiming that the sentiment about Madrid was true. And, at the time of writing, no public mea culpa has come from the 38-year-old impresario or his camp.
When Piqué was a player for Barcelona and Spain, I was much closer to him and his entourage, and he often explained that he was trying to be treated more seriously by his teammates, that he wanted to show more maturity, gain respect and change his profile. A shrewd move. But couldn’t Piqué apply that same logic to Lamine Yamal? Couldn’t he remember what it’s like to make your way in a hard-nosed locker room and establish yourself among peers for your attitude, behaviour and character, rather than your talent? My take is that Piqué has been crass, self-serving and irresponsible in this mess.
As for Jorge Mendes, Lamine’s agent, where was he? What was he thinking? Doesn’t he provide the kind of firewall counselling or checks-and-balance protection that are the bare minimum for any agent representing a young, high-profile sports star? Time for Mendes to offer his client an apology, and to up his game.
What about Hansi Flick? In the penultimate news conference he sat through the Barça coach was asked about Lamine’s off-pitch choices and said, dismissively: “None of my business.” Wrong, wrong, wrong.
When it’s a genius-level talent of world-class proportions and he’s only 18, it’s very much part of the coach’s responsibilities to say, and enforce that there should be no public activities in the buildup to the Clásico without their specific prior approval.
A general laissez-faire approach toward players’ free time is fine. Allowing a free-for-all in the days building up to playing against an evidently hurt, hungry and superior Real Madrid? Impossible. Definitely time for a coach to show his experience, his authority and his leadership.
1:35
Moreno: Real Madrid played their best 45 minutes under Alonso
Ale Moreno discusses Real Madrid’s performance against Barcelona that give Xabi Alonso his first El Clasico win in LaLiga.
Finally, to Carvajal. I sat opposite him in the elegant library of Öschberghof Golf Hotel in Donaueschingen in the days leading up to Euro 2024 for a long interview in a relaxed environment. He said about Lamine: “When I was 16, I was playing in the Real Madrid youth team and I was the happiest kid in the world, and now Lamine is going to start for Spain in a Euros and play a key role for us.
“It’s incredible. I mean, it speaks volumes about how talented he is. To be so young, he has a unique talent that it’s difficult to explain, but we have to take good care of him. With such a young player, you have to be extra careful, because elite football takes a lot out of you and you have to protect him and take care of him. And above all, he has to learn.”
Over the next six weeks, that 16-year-old played himself into the team of the tournament, scored the goal of the tournament (in the 2-1 semifinal win over France) and helped Carvajal claim what, I guess, will be his only European Championship winners medal. Carvajal’s “yap yap” gesture at the end of Sunday’s Clásico was aimed at his Spain teammate, sparked the brawl and, knowing him, I’m certain he’s completely unrepentant.
Just by the by, Spain’s excellent qualification campaign for the World Cup has left them top of Group E, but doesn’t mean that they are invulnerable — that’s a simple truth sport teaches us over and over again.
I’ve seen a Spain squad in deep personal turmoil before — Brazil World Cup 2014, during what were the ‘Clásico wars’ sparked by José Mourinho’s ‘scorched earth’ policy of setting his Madrid players against Barcelona’s Spain contingent. It was destructive, to the point that it ruined that golden generation, but that kind of corrosive atmosphere has now been absent for a good seven years.
Does Carvajal, with the last World Cup of his career looming, really want poisonous ill-feeling with Spain’s most threatening, most ‘differential’ player and his fellow-Barcelona contingent? It seemed so on Sunday but, as with Piqué, Mendes and Flick I think that Carvajal’s decision, more than the errors of a misguided 18 year-old, was immature, irresponsible and unbecoming of his status.
Lamine made a mistake, no question — but the castigation and the condemnation should be for the grown-ups who should have been in the room, but left at the wrong time.
