The day that Sergio Busquets pulled Lamine Yamal's ears

Barcelona"You're 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 blaugrana star has addressed various topics – sporting and non-sporting – in a deep conversation with former footballer Jorge Valdano that will be broadcast in full this Friday at 9 p.m. 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 the 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 with 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 told me: 'What have you done with the national team?' I was a kid and I shat myself," he recalls in a fragment of the interview on Universo Valdano which has already been published by Mundo Deportivo. "I explained to him what had happened and he told me: 'Now you're 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 continued, 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 I deserve it this year," he asserts. "The problem is that people value things that are not about the Ballon d'Or. When it refocuses 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 acknowledges that he would like to play against Real Madrid in the Champions League, a competition that is the goal of 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 going for the League, but we have to play well," he acknowledges.

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 from 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 thing whether it is right or wrong because they say it to me in a derogatory way. It is wrong, but he has paid for a ticket to see me and I will not get angry because he has disrespected me," says the winger born in Rocafonda (Mataró).