The day that Sergio Busquets pulled Lamine Yamal's ears

Barcelona"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.

Regarding the anecdote with former Barça captain Sergio Busquets, the footballer explains that the episode helped him mature during his first months in elite football. "Once I was suspended for three weeks from the Spanish national team because we were doing silly things like little kids. Then Busi [Sergio Busquets] caught me one day when I was going up to train with the Barça first team and said to me: 'What have you done with the national team?' I was a kid and I was terrified," he recalls in a fragment of the interview on Universo Valdano. "I explained to him what had happened and he told me: 'Now you are at Barça, everyone knows who you are and it doesn't matter what player you are, you have to behave.' From then on, I focused on football. I didn't go out, I trained, I played, I rested, I went to see my mother and I kept going, and football, football, football," he explains.

A lesson that has turned him into one of the best players in the world, and one of the favorites for this year's Ballon d'Or. "Mbappé and I are the two best in the world, but I think this year I deserve it," he asserts. "The problem is that people value things that are not about the Ballon d'Or. When it is refocused and the award is for the best player in the world and not for whoever scores the most goals or wins the most titles, the Ballon d'Or will have its value again," he adds.

In this sense, the 'blaugrana' player admits that he would like to play against Real Madrid in the Champions League, a competition that is a goal for the Catalans. "Being obsessed with winning the Champions League is good. We are Barça and we have the team to do it, it would be very cowardly to say that we are only looking to win the League, but we have to play well," he acknowledges while showing himself to be ambitious to continue winning titles. "I place a lot of demand on myself, which can be good because it helps me train better, but also bad because if I don't play well I end up sad. I always think that we will beat Madrid and we will be League champions."

Racism, the order of the day

Beyond his sporting facet, Lamine Yamal has also spoken about the racist comments he has suffered throughout his life. "I think that people are, indirectly, racist towards you, but they don't realize it," he confessed. "Things are being done, but one should be more serious with some decisions. A person who has racist behavior and everyone is seeing it, millions of children, you have to punish them as God commands. I would change the punishment, it is something that cannot be tolerated," he adds.

"I have come out of a place where it is not that it is accepted, because things that are wrong can never be accepted, but it does not bother you. That a person calls me 'black' will not bother me, I am black. It is another matter whether it is right or wrong because they are saying it to me in a derogatory way. It is wrong, but they have paid for a ticket to see me and I will not get angry because they have disrespected me," says the winger born in Rocafonda (Mataró).