Quote from: Catenaccio on Today at 05:18:49 AM

Quote from: EFS on July 16, 2025, 09:32:41 PM

Lamine Yamal is the new owner of the number 10 at FC Barcelona. I'm very happy for him, he deserved it. Barca's decision to give number 10 jersey to Ansu Fati was wrong. Fati was perhaps the biggest flop in the history of La Masia. Luckily they sent him to Monaco. Yamal will carry the number 10 very well.
This iconic jersey is a legacy of Maradona, Romario, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho and Messi. We'll finally get to see a real superstar wearing it again.

Yamal has grown up better than Ansu Fati and he has shown his talent, strong mentality and very good performances for both Barcelona and Spanish national teams. It's big difference than Ansu Fati who has never met expectation of Barcelona and even he is still very young now, his career has been falling down a lot. Ansu Fati reminds me about Bojan Krkic who had to leave Barcelona and accepted to play for smaller and smaller clubs with time.

Lamine Yamal is different and he can make many magical moments on field but he must control himself better. At his age, he needs proper support from his parents, the club and perhaps someone who can help him having better lifestyle. Not many players who have great talent like Yamal but there are so little players who can be professional like Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Ibrahimovic, Lewandowski, Benzema and Modric for example. Yamal with his great talent will potentially have very good career but he must take care of his body and career better.

The Yamal vs Fati thing is almost a case study in "right talent, right moment, right body". The stats say it all: Yamal at 18 has 127 senior appearances, 31 goals, 43 assists and is already the go-to creative engine for both Barca and Spain. Fati, even before turning 19, saw his career wrecked by a injury that shortens elite football careers by 3.8 years on average. People always want to call it a "curse" or "bad luck", but the reality is, Fati was dealt a nightmare hand by medical science

Fati and Bojan both hit the glass ceiling of blocked pathways . Too many megastars in the squad, not enough runway, anxiety, pressure, and their early numbers become trivia answers. Yamal's "forced promotion" says that a club is in crisis, needing a poster boy, so he became the youngest-ever everything because there was literally no one else. If Fati had come up post-Messi, or Bojan had this much first-team vacuum, their stats would look way fatter

As for lifestyle, raw skill means nothing if you melt under the off-field circus. Messi, Cristiano, Zlatan, etc., had "boring" discipline. Yamal's birthday party controversy is the first red flag. The club"s PR response was weak, and it makes you wonder if he is got the same support system that built those legends. One scandal at 18 is not the end, but if he starts acting like a TikTok influencer instead of a professional, he is in Bojan territory real quick

If I am Flick, Laporta, or his agent, I am building a moat of real mentors and a burnout prevention plan, because 55 matches a season at 18 with no rotation is also a time bomb. The talent is generational, but the football gods eat their young if they do not get some old-head wisdom in the room