Watching the 16-year-old Spanish forward Lamine Yamal waltz across the pitch on Tuesday with the grace and composure of a 20-year veteran, shimmying one way to go the other before expertly placing the ball from well outside the box into the back of the net, completely broke my world.
This was an equalising goal against France, who have Kylian Mbappé (who not long ago was football’s newest wonderkid) as their talisman and won the World Cup in 2018. It was perhaps the most stunning moment so far in this year’s European Championship. And it was produced by a boy – yes, a boy, all of 16 years and 362 days old when he did it (he turns 17 today). After scoring, Lamine Yamal ran to the sidelines to celebrate, only then betraying his age as he flashed a pimple-faced grin, his braces fully on show.
There is a part of me, however small, that thinks I still have what it takes to play. I was good once, even signing for a short stint to a semi-professional non-league club in Nottingham (OK, not quite Barcelona. But still). Maybe, I think to myself in moments like these, if one or two things had gone differently, it could have been me cutting on to my left foot outside the box. But now, courtesy of Lamine Yamal, I’m reckoning with the devastating fact that at 36 I am, at best, the age of a battle-scarred pro in the twilight of their career. My dream – and I suspect that of many ageing millennial football fans who watched Lamine Yamal’s goal in awe (and with a hint of envy) – is over. I am officially washed up. No longer able to run the line at a trot and whip in crosses; far more likely to tell you about how well I used to do so in 2007.
Many of us fans may yearn for the moments footballers like Lamine Yamal get to experience: scoring an outrageous goal in a vital knockout match in front of tens of thousands of fans, broadcast to millions watching on TV. But we often forget about the sacrifices that are required. Not only those made by the Lamine Yamals or Mbappés either, but also by those on the bench for less high-profile teams such as Albania or Slovenia. In most countries around the world, just being a substitute represents realised dreams – and the shattered dreams of thousands of players behind them who weren’t quite good enough to make it.
Last week, the former Italy footballer and Juventus legend Claudio Marchisio was forced to respond to a group of ultras camped outside a restaurant in Turin he co-owns. They had unfurled a vulgar banner calling him a “traitor” for stating the simple fact that there are more supporters of the club’s regional rivals, Torino, in the city than Juventus supporters. On Instagram he fired back, citing his years of service and pointing to the reality of life as a footballer, saying they could never understand “the kilometres I covered as a kid to train and play in the provinces, the adolescence I missed, the friendships I lost by never being there”.
My time in football among some elite-ish athletes, some of whom did rise to the ranks of national teams, the English Championship and the leagues below it, and the MLS in the US, showed me how talented and determined footballers tend to be – even those dismissed as “shit” by grumpy fans watching on their TVs.
That kind of criticism is often just a form of envy betraying the physical limitations of the critics themselves. Because no one has ever really liked admitting they’re ageing or that they can no longer do a hundred keepy-uppies. But Lamine Yamal’s strike, and the incredible technique and skill he exhibited, is perhaps what us ageing, wistful footballers needed: a reminder that others have talent the rest of us do not. A reminder that dreams of “what ifs” are just that.
I’m finding the beauty in letting go and watching a maestro such as Lamine Yamal (who was, by the way, 12 when the pandemic hit), a player I’ll hopefully still be watching over the coming decades as my arthritis evolves into hip replacements. So here’s to a Spain v England final featuring teens, twentysomethings and a few guys in my age bracket who are all, without a doubt, way better than I can ever be at football.
Ben Makuch is a freelance journalist
