Lamine Yamal does not only transcend because of his goals and his football. After opening the scoring in the (2-3) victory of the Spanish national team at Wembley against England in a duel corresponding to the Nations League, the Blaugrana winger made the son of a fellow professional happy.

This time, the moral lesson that “campaigns are made by them, not us” cannot be pronounced. The pestering that Barça is doing for Lamine Yamal to win the Ballon d’Or cannot be masked, especially because the Catalan genius is the first to ensure that everyone gets on board the ship. Not even the elusive Hansi Flick has been able to escape it. The German coach, an enemy of egos and elements that distort collective goals, was called to duty to change his speech at the request of the star and the club's leadership. A bit forced by the circumstances, Flick also ended up declaring him worthy of the award. It escapes no one that having a footballer crowned with the highest individual award would mean increasing revenue and improving the brand image. Hansi, we are also very eager for this unbearable noise to end.

"You are at Barça and it doesn't matter what player you are, you have to behave." This is how Lamine Yamal explains an anecdote with Sergio Busquets during his first years in the Barça first-team dressing room. The Barça star has covered various topics – sporting and non-sporting – in an in-depth conversation with former footballer Jorge Valdano. Throughout the week, previews have been published in which, for example, the winger from Rocafonda considers himself deserving of the Ballon d'Or.

Lamine Yamal, Pau Cubarsí, Marc Bernal and now… Xavi Espart. His name has already appeared in the newspapers and sports talk shows, but this Sunday he took another step in his meteoric rise to the first team. The Barcelona-born footballer –who has started in all five League matches this season– made his goalscoring debut with Barça in the victory at Llevant's ground (2-4). "He is a player who played on the inside until he was a cadet. He improved plays when the ball passed through his feet and had the footballing intelligence to organize. He ended up playing many minutes because he was very reliable. When he was older, they tried him out as a full-back because he has great vision for building up the play and could end up occupying more interior positions during the match," explains a former youth coach of his to ARA.

On Monday, in the lead-up to the Real Madrid - Inter Milan Champions League match, Kylian Mbappé was emphatic in stating that he considered he had done more to deserve it than anyone –"I have made history", he said– to take home the Ballon d'Or. The next day, much more cautious, Lamine Yamal stated, on the eve of the clash against Feyenoord, that winning it did not depend on him, despite considering that he had had a good enough season to receive the trophy, and that he does not plan to beg to take home the award that will be granted by the magazine France Footballon October 26th.

Fireworks to say goodbye to Mestalla (0-5). Barça, which has put all its repertoire of offensive tricks on the table, has thrashed Valencia in a match in which it was favored by the calamitous state of a rival that, normally, used to make things difficult. Now it is experiencing an internal civil war that is bleeding it dry, with the fans fed up with a management that is sinking them. If Barça lives relatively happily, Valencia does not. And the match, which could be Barça's last at Mestalla pending a possible duel in the Cup, has highlighted this reality. In fact, attacking as it has done today, Barça would also have won at the Mestalla of before, the one where all rivals suffered greatly. Barça has scored five goals and did not even need to play at 100% during the second half.

Lamine Yamal turned 19 on July 13, and celebrated it within the framework of the soccer World Cup in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. It was a celebration with his partner, Inés García; his inseparable companions Soha and Moha, who besides being his cousin is his guardian angel; his mother Sheila, and his Spanish national team teammates, as well as other family members. It was a discreet celebration. Almost a month later, and the night before rejoining the rest of the Spanish internationals in the blaugrana discipline – they are called this Wednesday from 9 a.m. at the Sant Joan Despí Sports City –, Lamine Yamal has celebrated a macro-party with more than a hundred guests at the Mas de Sant Lleí estate, as El Español has reported.

"We fell here as we could have fallen anywhere else. And then came this whole story: an Argentine named Leo who is Lamine's first coach. It's as if it were already written," smiles Leo Giordanella (Cipolletti, Patagonia; 1992). Leo Messi and Lamine Yamal first crossed paths in the World Cup final, with a victory for the Spanish national team and the young star from Rocafonda, but their relationship is full of precious connections and incredible coincidences that have united them for years.

I currently attend to more than a dozen young people in my practice, some born in Morocco and others here, children of Moroccan parents. When I listen to them, I often think about how little they resemble the portrait we usually paint of the children of immigrants. They all have higher education: degrees, master's degrees, or doctorates. They hold diverse professions and occupy positions of responsibility in hospitals, universities, professional associations, and other institutions in the country. But there is a characteristic that unites them even more than their résumés.

For some time now, footballers have stopped being simply athletes to become style icons, very often through association with renowned fashion brands. But finding the perfect styling is not an easy task, and it's most common for celebrities, when dressing, to receive advice from expert professionals who know much more about fashion than they do. Lamine Yamal, Barça's great star and one of the standout footballers of the 2026 World Cup, has also decided to rely on someone external to choose the pieces for his wardrobe. The chosen one to advise him is a person almost as well-known as he is, Pilar Vila, Rosalía's sister.

Rivers of ink have flowed these days over a photograph that came to light two summers ago, on the occasion of the fascinating emergence, at just 16 years old, of Lamine Yamal in a major international tournament: a European Championship that the Spanish team ended up winning in England. The current impact, on the eve of a World Cup final, surpasses the initial one. In fact, there are even skeptics who suggest, in the midst of the explosion of artificial intelligence, that the image in question is a fake.

A new era has begun in world football. Spain sewed the second star as world champion onto their jersey after defeating an Argentina in extra time, who had run out of miracles in the semifinals. The final of a strange and exciting World Cup was always played according to what Spain wanted, turning everything around the ball, attacking with ambition. Glory is theirs after a final in which Messi, very disconnected from the game, ceded the crown to Lamine Yamal. An era ends and a new one begins, personified in the young man from Rocafonda. One man alone cannot win World Cups, but a team can. And Luis de la Fuente's team, a coach until recently unknown, is a block that defends a style. An idea in which the collective rules, even though a lack of accuracy prolonged the agony until extra time. A final decided thanks to an unexpected hero, the Valencian Ferran Torres, who caught a ball inside the area. If in 2010 Spain won their first World Cup with a goal from Iniesta in the 116th minute, on this occasion the goal arrived in the 106th thanks, once again, to a Barça player.

Football, the king of sports and a global business, has the professional sporting aspect and the political identity aspect. It moves a lot of money, large masses of fans, and many illusions. The passion for a club has a strong component of emotional adhesion. Support for a national team also does, with the added political layer. Football awakens passions and sublimes wars: better a competition between young people on the field than a life-or-death clash between soldiers. Hopefully, Ukraine and Russia - or Israel and Palestine - would compete in stadiums with a ball instead of doing so from the trenches with deadly weapons.

When this Sunday the ball starts rolling in the World Cup final at the MetLife stadium on the outskirts of New York, the city that never sleeps, all eyes will be on two players trained in Barcelona, Lionel Messi and Lamine Yamal. The leaders of Argentina and Spain, the two finalist teams. It will be special for a group of people who, searching through old photos on their mobile phones, find some that show these two players when they were much younger: the coaches from La Masia who, in some way, helped them on both their paths to MetLife stadium.

Every World Cup leaves a handful of images destined to become icons. The hand of God by Maradona, Pelé lifting the World Cup or Lionel Messi celebrating his first world title wearing a bisht, the black and gold robe they placed on him before lifting the trophy in Qatar 2022. But if there is one photograph that has marked the prelude and a large part of the narrative of the 2026 World Cup, it is a very different one: a twenty-year-old Messi bathing a baby who, almost two decades later, has become his rival in a World Cup final. That baby was Lamine Yamal.

Attempted robbery at Lamine Yamal's house on the night the player led Spain to the World Cup semi-finals. As reported by La Vanguardia and confirmed by Mossos sources to ARA, thieves tried to access the Blaugrana star's property in Esplugues de Llobregat early this morning, but were caught by one of his private security guards, who saw the intruders on the security cameras, according to the aforementioned newspaper.

Mariano Rajoy's racist comment about the French team continues to generate reactions. After the criticism that has come from France and the condemnation from Pedro Sánchez's government, it is now Lamine Yamal's turn. "Football, if it serves any purpose, is to integrate society," he stated, following the indignation that has been awakened the chronicle that the former Spanish president published after Spain's victory against Belgium, which qualified Luis de la Fuente's team for the World Cup semi-finals.

With the numbers in hand, Lamine Yamal is far from the offensive contributions of other stars of this World Cup. For now, the Barça winger scores a single goal in the tournament and has not played any assistance. Of course, with the exception of the match against Portugal, he has not been able to play all the possible minutes. In the debut against Cape Verde he was a substitute and only played 19 minutes. Against Saudi Arabia he was a starter and was substituted at halftime after scoring. Against Uruguay, 76 minutes; and against Austria, 85. With the 90 minutes of the round of 16 against Portugal, he adds up to 315 minutes out of a possible 450. 70%. A low percentage if you consider that the top scorers (Leo Messi, Harry Kane and Kylian Mbappé) exceed 90% participation.

For those of us who like football, it's very difficult to enjoy the World Cup, with all this display of banal nationalism and cheap geopolitics. You might tell me, as the elders used to say, and as Aesop said before, that the fox, when it can't reach something, says it's sour. And indeed, I wish Catalonia could participate in this circus, and it irritates me that FIFA instigates a fever of patriotism — as it does every four years — which, in our case, is the expression of a substituted identity. When faced with a World Cup, everyone chooses a jersey, and if the Catalan one isn't available, they put on another, be it the Spanish one (because it's where Catalans play, by decree), the Moroccan one, or the Argentine one, which is the one for many newcomers. In Catalonia, everyone has the right to exercise, except Catalans.Spain is a fragile nation and knows that sport softens the cracks. Since now, in addition, there are many Catalans in the Spanish team, a Muslim and a black person, Spanish nationalism progress has prepared a speech tailored to them, evading the fact that the purported plurality of the red is based on an imposition. Obviously, they have the complicity of the Catalan players, who adapt to the situation because they do not want to be under suspicion. Lamine Yamal speaks Catalan, if necessary, when he wears the Barça jersey, but he gives it up at the World Cup so that there are no doubts about his loyalties, which may be those of the heart but also those dictated by common sense and the pressure of his environment: look, Lamine, they already look at you strangely because you are half Moroccan and Muslim, let's not make it more complicated with demonstrations of Catalanism.

The last time the Spanish national team had overcome a World Cup knockout match was in 2010, the year they were proclaimed champions in South Africa. Since then, la roja had either fallen in the group stage or in the first knockout match. Sixteen years later, the Spanish national team broke the curse by defeating Austria (3-0) to reach the round of 16, where they will face Portugal. Oyarzabal around the half-hour mark, and Pedro Porro and – once again – Oyarzabal in the second half tipped the balance in favor of a team that played from less to more but ended up thrashing and dispelling the doubts they had shown at the start of the competition.