Lamine Yamal and the curious finish which shows why he is different

New York Times

a day ago

Lamine Yamal again. Adrien Rabiot again. Left-footed goals again.
On a wild night in Stuttgart, where Spain and France played a game of basketball on a football pitch, the storyline had a familiar narrative running through it in more ways than one.
It was 331 days ago when Yamal scored that goal against France in the European Championship semi-finals, his left foot sumptuously curling the ball into the top corner from 25 yards out, leaving Rabiot wishing that he had not only got across quicker to try to block the shot but that he had also chosen his words much more carefully the night before the game.
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'If you want to play at a Euro final, you need to do more than he has done up until now,' the France midfielder said about Yamal, who was 16 years old at the time.
'Move in silence, only speak when it's time to say checkmate,' Yamal replied on Instagram.
Yamal posted again after scoring his wonder goal against France: 'Checkmate'.
Eleven months later it was Rabiot who scythed down Yamal from behind for a penalty that the 17-year old calmly converted.
What is it with teenagers constantly wanting to have the last word, eh?
Except Yamal wasn't quite finished. His second goal against France, 13 minutes later, put Spain 4-1 up and made him the standout candidate for the player-of-the-match award.
But it was a curious and highly unusual finish. Well, unusual for anyone else, but maybe not for Yamal.
Some data first. In competitive games for club and country at senior level, Yamal has scored 31 goals and 29 of them have been with his left foot. His right foot isn't, to borrow that old cliche, just for standing on. But it's fair to say that he doesn't use it much, which is why Philipp Lahm said what he did when he told The Athletic in April how he would try to mark Yamal.
'He has to be on his weaker foot at all times. He cannot have any space,' Lahm, the former Germany international, said.
One of Yamal's two weaker-foot goals came in Barcelona's 4-0 victory at the Bernabeu in October, after which he joked: 'Real Madrid's players didn't know that I have a right foot too! I had to use it when needed.'
It looked like it would also be required against France in the UEFA Nations League semi-final on Thursday night, when Yamal broke into the penalty area in the second half after running onto a first-time pass from Pedro Porro. Holding off a challenge from the France centre-back Clement Lenglet — that wiry frame of Yamal's is deceptively strong — and with the angle against him, he somehow managed to slip the ball past the goalkeeper Mike Maignan.
From a vantage point high up on the opposite side of the stadium — in other words, a long way from the goal — the first instinct was that Yamal had scored with his right foot, primarily because that was how it looked in the blink of an eye.
Indeed, that was still the assumption when a slow motion replay started to be shown on the screen, partly because of the position of the ball but also the fact that the France centre-back Clement Lenglet was on the inside of Yamal rather than the outside. By going with his left foot, Yamal surely risked the shot being blocked.
At least that was the theory.
Yamal had other ideas and instead of taking the more conventional route and shooting with his right, he prodded the ball beyond Maignan with his left.
It appeared as though the ball was almost pushed, which is why the soleplate of his boot is visible afterwards – Yamal has to work so hard to get enough purchase on the ball to send it past Maignan using this technique that his leg ends up horizontal after making contact.
It looks strange when you watch it back but it was hugely effective and perhaps also goes some way to explaining why Maignan seemed to be caught slightly off guard and beaten in a way that you wouldn't expect him to be in that scenario.
In fact, the France goalkeeper ended up diving after the ball was already past him, which suggests that Yamal had taken him by surprise with such an unorthodox and instinctive finish.
It is also — and this is an area of his game where he is so different from his former Barcelona team-mate Ousmane Dembele, who genuinely has no idea which is his stronger foot — an example of how Yamal doesn't suffer at all from being so dependent on his left.
Why?
First things first, his left foot is obviously a thing of beauty, whether passing, shooting or dribbling. There was a moment late in the France game, which Spain won 5-4, when Yamal was performing pirouettes in the centre of the pitch, the ball glued to his left foot to such an extent that the opposition left-back Theo Hernandez decided to change sport. Cue a rugby tackle.
Secondly, Yamal is able to improvise and use his left foot in so many different ways, including the 'trivela' – an outside-of-the-boot shot or pass that he executes brilliantly over a range of distances. Yamal is able to do that with such precision, that it doesn't just negate the need to use his right, but at times it's actually more efficient to play the ball with the outside of his left because it's naturally in his stride pattern.
Inevitably at this point the mind wanders to other predominantly one-footed players, including everyone from Diego Maradona to Arjen Robben and Ricardo Quaresma.
Ultimately, though, Yamal is one of a kind or, as the Inter Milan manager Simone Inzaghi recently put it, 'one of those talents that appear once every 50 years'.
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Against France, on his 20th cap for Spain, Yamal upstaged Dembele, one of his rivals for the Ballon d'Or, and Kylian Mbappe and Desire Doue too.
Next up for him is Cristiano Ronaldo, when Spain take on Portugal in the UEFA Nations League final in Munich on Sunday.
Ronaldo, for context, was another six months away from playing his first international match at Yamal's age.
(James Gill – Danehouse/Getty Images)