Spain clash over Lamine Yamal: De la Fuente calls him up, but Barça says he's injured.
The club announces that the Rocafonda winger will have to be out of action for two to three weeks.
BarcelonaBarça announced this Friday that Lamine Yamal is experiencing discomfort in his pubic bone again and will miss this weekend's match against Sevilla. The club estimates the young Catalan winger will be out for two to three weeks. Lamine Yamal's relapse coincides with Luis de la Fuente's new squad, which was called up this afternoon. has announced that he was counting on the Rocafonda player for next week's matches. It's worth remembering that just a few weeks ago, Hansi Flick criticized the way Lamine Yamal was treated during the last squad in a press conference. Finally, the Barça winger will not travel with the national team.
In fact, the Barcelona club, as this newspaper reported, had activated diplomacy so that the Maresme striker would not be part of the Spanish national team's squad to play two World Cup qualifying matches against Georgia and Bulgaria. The intention of Hansi Flick and his staff was that Lamine Yamal could continue getting in shape in Barcelona while the red He will play both matches, which on paper are manageable. This October layoff should serve to finally dispel the ghosts of a relapse, which Barça confirmed this Friday, just hours after Spanish coach Luis De la Fuente's squad was announced, which included the winger from Rocafonda.
This has greatly upset the Blaugrana club: from Hansi Flick and the club's medical services, to the sporting directors and the board of directors. The issue is that, also as ARA reported, Lamine Yamal has played the last two matches with Barça – thirty minutes against Real Sociedad and ninety minutes against PSG, although at half speed as the demanding match against the French team progressed – without having cleared the discomfort in whose pubis he returned from the injury. which raised Hansi Flick's tone. The German coach's anger, who accused Spain's coaching staff of "not taking care" of the player, is explained by the fact that Lamine Yamal had attended the training camp with the Spanish national team with a medical report on his discomfort under his arm.
Flick then explained, on September 13, that the Barça star had come to the Spanish national team with "discomfort" and emphasized that he played almost the entire two matches for Spain despite the fact that, in both, the Spanish team won comfortably: 0-3-0. He claimed that he had been medicated with painkillers and that he barely trained due to the pain, but he did play. "I don't think this is the way to take care of the players. I'm very sad," Flick complained angrily. Now Barça is working to prevent a similar situation from happening again.
De la Fuente responds to Hansi Flick
Finally, Lamine Yamal returned to Barça on Sunday, September 28, after missing four matches—three in La Liga and one in the Champions League—with the Blaugrana since returning from the Spanish national team squad. He was ruled out against Valencia, Newcastle, Getafe, and Oviedo. This Friday, pretending to feel the pressure on Barça's requests for the Blaugrana star to avoid traveling with Spain and take advantage of the international break to relieve his pubic pain, the Royal Spanish Football Federation and De la Fuente included him in the squad list for the games against Georgia and Bulgaria.
At the press conference, the Spanish coach didn't hesitate to respond to Hansi Flick and highlight the obvious struggle between Spain and Barça for Lamine Yamal. "There's no conflict with Hansi Flick. He was a national team coach and I believed he had that empathy with the other national teams. I was surprised that a former national team coach would have that opinion, but everyone has their own," De la Fuente assured. Barça sources consulted by ARA did not hesitate to point out De la Fuente's "arrogance" in calling up Lamine Yamal despite knowing he was suffering from discomfort.
In order to call him up to Spain for this new international window and before the Blaugrana club released the statement announcing that the winger would be out for two to three weeks, De la Fuente argued that "if Lamine Yamal can play for Barça, he can also play for the national team." Now, however, he will not play for either of them. He will be out this Sunday for the Catalans' visit to the Sánchez Pizjuán, Sevilla's home ground, and the progress of his pubic discomfort will determine whether he can return on October 18th when Girona visits Barcelona or on Tuesday the 21st against Olympiakos, also in Barcelona, in the third matchday of the Champions League phase.
