Lamine Yamal interview: ‘Football is mechanised but players like me have that special spark’

Spain and Barcelona wonderkid has won World Cup and European Championship but says there are no limits for his career

SUPERSTAR: Lamine Yamal: 'Barcelona gave me control, understanding, IQ. In the park there’s no IQ: you go at your opponent, then go back again. I have that.' Carl Recine/Getty Images)

LIKE the kid he is, Lamine Yamal just wanted to keep playing. This wasn’t Plaça Joan XXIII, wasn’t El Parque de Rocafonda either; it wasn’t the Mataró neighbourhood where it all began, but it might have been. “We’re in a World Cup final and I wanted to carry on,” he says, and there’s the smile again, the braces. Really? “Yes”. No nerves? “No. I never thought: ‘Just blow the whistle’. I was enjoying it.” 

No fear, just fun: July 19th, New Jersey and he knew: this 19-year-old who had happily been asleep on the bus to the biggest match of his life.