Barcelona teenager Lamine Yamal dominates Benfica with goal and assist in Champions League win

Lamine Yamal, so that the extraordinary look has been obliged since … 2007. Just when you thought the young superstar of Barcelona had hit the top ceiling of what could reasonably be expected from a 17-year-old on a football field, he goes and blows a hole in a Champions League-Knock-Outdie with two of the soccer in this season.

First the assist. Florentino sent flying to the floor and Nicolas Otamendi who crashed against the unintended ball screen of Robert Lewandowski, Yamal flew into the box, the space that opened to try to bend it in the far corner. Only the young person will know if he was trying to do that. What he did was the ball curling from the goal and directly in the step of Raphinha for the opening goal.

If someone other than perhaps half a dozen players on the planet did, you would call it a shaft. At an age where he legally cannot vote in an election, the decision -making and technical skills of Yamal is such that you must at least consider the possibility that he meant it.

There was no doubt about his goal, the strike that Barcelona’s two goal aggregated ahead of Benfica recovered after Nicolas Otamendi had beaten out of a corner. Yamal takes the ball close to the right sidelines and blew past a challenge, but his touch was to take him away from the goal while he pulled level with the edge of the box. Again, it seemed to be.

With the most minimal back lift and virtually no additional, Yamal met the ball in Pasie. Anatolii trick left the bend he gave it without a chance to get close. Even for a young person with his own spotless scoring scrapbook, this might just be the choice of the party.

Barcelona would add more to their lead when Raphinha finished a fast counter just before the break. The Brazilian may have ended this game with two goals, but without a doubt it was Yamal’s Day. Once more. The temptation would be to label this, the first Champions League -Knock -Out match in which he scored, as an outbreak moment for the young person. It would be for most. In the case of Yamal we were probably accepted for some time in Euro 2024 at the Breakout moment, perhaps when he caught up Pele to become the youngest goal scorer ever at a big tournament.

Indeed after 17 years, 241 days, Yamal became the youngest player who scored and assisted in a Champions League match, in which the previous record of Breel Embolo defeated three weeks and a day. Lionel Messi, perhaps the last player who looks so good in this young age, scored and assisted with a 5-0 win over Panathinaikos at the age of 18, 131 days old.

Yamal and Company are now the first side officially in the hat for the quarterfinals of the Champions League (sorry Arsenal, you will have to appear tomorrow evening). That looks like another important opportunity to bow to the will of a teenager, perhaps his way through Inter’s high -quality defense.

If that is against whom Barcelona ends, you would not bet that Yamal has a huge impact. That is his process, it feels a matter of when he then overwhelmes an elite defense, not like. How long before we start to get one word from the label that applied to him so often, the best young player in the world?