Lamine Yamal and the Catalonia of the future
Flick and Lamine Yamal's Barça have dazzled the football world this season, and whatever happens in the Champions League final, it will be remembered as the season of the breakthrough of the genius from Rocafonda, a 17-year-old teenager with a Guinean mother and a Catalan-Moroccan father, educated at La Gran Masia, who in just a few months has already surpassed the expectations of specialists. The international press has exhausted adjectives to describe his extraordinary goals, and at this moment, his face and his number 19 have transcended the boundaries of football to become global icons.
Barcelona fans have enjoyed this group of young Catalans from the youth academy like never before, bolstered by a couple of Poles who could be the fathers of some of them, and players in their prime like Raphinha and Kounde. Their complete lack of self-consciousness, their way of playing as if they were still in the schoolyard and the result didn't matter, their endless solidarity and the good vibes they transmit have awakened Barcelona fans from the lethargy they seemed to have sunk into since Messi's departure.
The general feeling is that, with this La Liga season, a new Barça era begins, led by this phenomenon called Lamine Yamal, who surprises with both his talent and a maturity uncommon in boys his age. Perhaps Barça fans still don't realize what it means that the next world idol will come not only from La Masia, like Messi, but is a Catalan from Mataró. A Catalan, moreover, who perfectly represents the reality of today's Catalonia, the country that people from all over the world have chosen to make the land where they want to see their children born, a country of mixture and fusion that has the Catalan language as its meeting point, the backbone of its identity.
In this, we must recognize that sport is ahead. It's much easier to see Laminas Yamalor buckets on a football field than in the office of a large company, in Parliament, or even in a university classroom. This Catalonia, with nearly 25% of its population of foreign origin, still has many giant steps to take to be equally present and diverse in all its social strata, but the first step is to recognize reality and, if necessary, be proud of it.
In this sense, Lamine Yamal represents the dream of multitudes of young immigrants who fill the squares every day playing ball, here and everywhere in Europe, dreaming of breaking down all the barriers that racism and xenophobia place in their lives. His case is similar to that of other players like Nico Williams or even Kylian Mbappé, who last summer called for mobilization against the far right in the French elections. Lamine Yamal, with his mischievous, braces-wearing smile, his boundless self-confidence, and at the same time his humanity, shows the way to an entire country still burdened by too many complexities and feuds.