When Luis de la Fuente appeared in the press room at the Rajko Mitic stadium in Belgrade on Thursday, after Spain drew 0-0 with Serbia, he was not a man disheartened by the disappointment of seeing two points slip away at the start of the defence of the Nations League that he won in 2023. He even looked smiling, with the peace of mind that comes from the display with which he won the European Championship on July 14 at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. He also looked forward to where the players are now: “It is a game that we could almost say is a pre-season game. The first game after arriving here, with new players, with players in the recovery phase,” he said. “We have lacked that finesse, that freshness. At this point, it is noticeable.”
In this general tone of the start of the season, Lamine Yamal stood out, Spain’s biggest agitator, who not only seems not to have gone on holiday, but is even producing more than before his emergence in the elite at 16 years of age last season.
Already at 17, in Belgrade he was, along with Fabian, the one who shot the most times, according to Opta: he attempted four shots, in one of which Rajkovic needed a brilliant stretch with his right hand close to his post. He was also the one who created the most chances for the rest: he made three final passes that led to two shots. He was also the one who completed the most dribbles (4) and the one who received the most fouls (4). He did not limit his deployment to attack: only Fabian, with seven recoveries, surpassed Lamine’s six.
The expansive performance that Lamine put in at the Little Maracana was not something that happened just on Thursday night. With Barcelona, he has started the League well above that general point that De la Fuente described as “pre-season”, as one of the most productive footballers in the championship. The evolution of his performance has traced an unusual trajectory in recent months: instead of accusing a summer interruption after which he would have needed to restart the machine and get it rolling for a while to get it back to the previous point, the Barça striker has picked up where he left off, with the same upward dynamic, even accelerating the takeoff.
Those close to him attribute the post-summer phenomenon to his natural conditions and the natural freshness of his age, rather than to a work plan completed at some point during the barely three weeks of work he has had. Like the rest of the players who were proclaimed European champions in Germany, Lamine played his last match on July 14 in Berlin, on the 15th he celebrated with the fans in Madrid and on the 16th he began his holidays, which lasted 20 days. On August 5 he returned to the Barça sports city, waiting for the rest of the team to return, still on tour in the USA. He did not have his first session with Hansi Flick until the 10th, and on the 12th he played his first 20 minutes in the Gamper against Monaco. On the 17th he was already a starter in the first match of the League in Valencia, where he already played 85 and began to show the jump in his influence in attack.
He is one of the five players who generate the most danger in the league. He is, for example, the one who makes the most passes into the box: he has 17, four every 90 minutes, double that of last year, according to StatsBomb.
He is also the second with the most contributions to goal: four, three assists and one goal. Only Lewandowski and Mingueza have five. And he is the fourth who contributes the most to besieging the goal: if you add up the shots and the chances created (pass before a shot), he has 21, only behind Raphinha (27), Mbappé (26) and Vinicius (24). In this he has also shot up: last year they added 3.6 shots plus chances created per game and now it is at 4.9. Lamine maintains with Spain the flight that he has raised at the start of the League.
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