There are plays that transcend the most exciting match and even the most competitive era, such as the one between Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo recently. The impact is magnified when the protagonist belongs to a team with such a sensitive culture as Barça’s. This explains the diffusion and aura that Lamine Yamal’s assist to Raphinha in the 1-5 at La Cerámica has gained. The winger’s pass with the outside of his left foot from the right flank to the opposite side where Raphinha was arriving provoked the admiration of the audience and the applause of the Villarreal fans. The flight of the ball from foot to foot has become part of the anthology of the best technical gestures in the 125 years of Barcelona’s history.
The imprint is so recent that no one has yet described, let alone sung, a unique parable in the catalogue of great works to be seen at the future Camp Nou. At 17, Lamine Yamal is not Pelé, surely the most precocious figure of world fame, nor Di Stéfano, and even less Cruyff, Maradona or Messi. Barcelona fans, however, are already celebrating the arrival of a forward who has allowed them to update the sticker album of a club that, in its times of prosperity and with the best foreigners, always had as a reference the youth team and, consequently, España Industrial, Condal, Barcelona Atlétic, Barça B and La Masia.
The best culé families remember the ode to Platko that Alberti dedicated to the gigantic Hungarian goalkeeper for his saves in the Cup final between Barça and Real in Santander in 1928: “Neither the sea, which jumped in front of you without being able to defend you/ Nor the rain. Nor the wind, which roared the loudest/ Neither the sea, nor the wind, Platko, Platko with blond blood, goalkeeper in the dust, lightning rod/ No one, no one, no one, no one forgets, Platko/”. Pepe Samitier, a close friend of Gardel, was known as “The Locust Man“because when he jumped with his toe he touched the crossbar of the goal in the 1920s, as Valentí Castanys illustrated. And the effects and strikes of Kubala that Serrat describes so well are also recalled.
Cruyff’s leap over Reina (1973); Romario’s drag over Alkorta (1994); Ronaldinho’s elastic at the Bernabéu (2005); Messi’s goal against Getafe (2007), Iniesta’s at Stamford Bridge (2009) and Maradona’s at the Bernabéu (1983) and in Belgrade (1982), as well as Lo Pelat’s passes to Ronaldo (1997-1998), figure in the Barcelona memory now stirred by the young Lamine. The winger’s play against Villarreal has deserved a multitude of adjectives both for its aesthetics and its difficulty and increases the expectation for the match at Montjuïc against Getafe.
The noise of the stadium should not drown out the possibility of reciting verses like those by Zitarrossa dedicated to Garrincha: “He carries it tied to his foot, like a moon tied to the flank of a rider/ he plays it without knowing that he plays the feeling of a crowd, and he hits it so softly, so short, so beautiful/ that the ball is a dove in flight/ and he touches it so just, so lightly, so quietly/ that he cleans it of mud and hangs it from the sky/ and the people shudder, and the people applaud him.” The lyrics project at times the figure of Lamine. The forward has already left his mark with a unique action that has amazed football and elevated Barça.
