“Maradona, Messi and now Yamal,” said Lothar Mattheus.

There might have been an element of hyperbole in the comparison, made as he watched Lamine Yamal excel at Euro 2024.

But the iconic former Germany midfielder, a World Cup, European Championship and Ballon d’Or winner, is well placed to judge.

Yamal, outstanding in Spain's European Championship triumph last summer, continues to scale astonishing heights with Barcelona.

In Tuesday's Champions League semi-final against INter, he marked his 100th appearance for Barcelona, still two months shy of his 18th birthday, with a breathtaking goal and a sensational individual performance.

What he is doing is unprecedented. His goal, coming only four days after he provided two assists in Barcelona's Copa del Rey final win over Real Madrid, made him the youngest player in history to score in a Champions League semi-final at 17 years and 291 days old.

At the same age, Lionel Messi had only made nine appearances for Barcelona, while Cristiano Ronaldo had only made 19 for boyhood club Sporting.

It remains to be seen whether he will go on to match the extraordinary achievements of that pair. But there can be no doubting the extent of his talent, nor the scale of his potential.

Lamine Yamal is Next Up.

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Yamal's 'gigantic step' at La Masia

Before he was fast-tracked into Barcelona’s first team and the Spanish national side, Yamal had to conquer the jump from cadete to juvenil in the club’s La Masia academy.

“A gigantic step,” is how Oscar Lopez, a former Barcelona player himself who has spent the last three years as coach of Barcelona’s Juvenil A side, or U19s, puts it to Sky Sports.

Yamal, a Barcelona player since he was seven, had already been identified as a rising star. But at 15, and already playing up an age group, much would depend on how he handled his promotion from the U16s to the U19s at the start of the 2022/23 season.

“That year was a very good process that I had to take him through in terms of acclimatisation to the age group, to the level, to the demands,” says Lopez.

“Because it’s not the same playing as a cadete for the U16s, even if you are playing up a year, as he was, to being 15 years old and playing against boys of 20 in the UEFA Youth League.

“So, we had to do a process of adaptation with him in which he saw that everything is progressive and has its evolution, and that he needed time to acclimatise, even though he had that innate talent that he is demonstrating right now at the Euros.”

Yamal had breezed through every age group to that point in La Masia.

This time, it was different.

“The process covered many different aspects, mentally, emotionally and physically,” adds Lopez. “He was a 15-year-old boy playing against boys five years older.

“On an emotional level, all of that could have broken him.”

It didn’t, of course. In fact, it made him stronger. But Yamal received no special treatment from Lopez, who was tasked with ensuring he produced application to match his talent.

“On the pitch, he progressively got more minutes, but that was a result of having to work hard, not because he was 15 and everyone was saying he was a very good player,” explains Lopez. “He had to earn those minutes.

“So, for a couple of months, he was coming in, he was working, he was training, he was getting his minutes. But he was also seeing that he was just another player in a squad where there were kids who were three or four years older than him.

“He was seeing that he had to wake up, liven himself up and make a real effort to earning a starting spot. He was showing his talent but, little by little, he was also gaining that ability to overcome, to grow, and to improve the innate ability that he had.”

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'Calm, measured and humble'

Yamal was helped by having a level of mental fortitude to rival his technical and physical talents. But there were still areas in which he had to develop, still setbacks he had to absorb.

“He is a very mentally mature boy,” says Lopez. “I think he has a very clear mentality and he doesn’t have the weight of nerves that almost all other players have at that age.

“But I think, progressively, he realised that he had to take a step forward emotionally, to understand how to manage situations that he had not experienced before, such as being on the bench and not getting to play in a match.

“He had never experienced going to a game, starting on the bench, and the game ending without him playing a minute because of the circumstances, because of other team-mates deserving it more, or because he was just not required.

“For a boy of 15 to manage that mentally and emotionally, you have to be with him and know how to help him with it little by little.”

Not that he was prone to outbursts. Yamal was and still is a quiet character; jovial but also serious about his profession – and his schoolwork. He was pictured studying in between his devastating performances for Spain at Euro 2024 in Germany.

Xavi Hernandez, the manager who oversaw his transition to the Barcelona first-team last season, talked up his “calm, measured and humble” personality. His successor Hansi Flick has made similar comments.

Those same personality traits shine through in conversation with Lopez.

“Even when he was younger, 14 or 15 and playing for the U16s, he seemed introverted when you talked to him.

“But he was extroverted when it came to going out on the pitch, and to managing his emotions and his talent.”

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'He is exceptional...like Iniesta or Xavi'

Albert Capellas, a former Barcelona academy coach and youth director who spent a decade working in La Masia before his departure in 2022, felt it was only ever a matter of time before Yamal made his mark at senior level.

“He was exceptional,” he tells Sky Sports. “He is the kind of player who you can see from the beginning will get the chance to play for the first-team, if he is lucky with injuries and his surroundings and the people around him are clever. That sometimes is not easy.

“But he is like Andres Iniesta or Xavi. I don’t like to compare players, so I’m not saying he is like Iniesta, Xavi or Messi as a player, because all of them are very different.

“But these are the kinds of players you see at a young age and you know you have someone very special in front of you who will make the difference in football.”

Lopez, a former team-mate of Messi’s at Barcelona before his playing career was ended prematurely by injury, was of course aware of where Yamal was heading too.

“When you see boys with this talent, you know that at any moment they can make leaps and bounds and take huge steps forward,” he says.

“It happened to me when I was with Messi as a team-mate. I went up to the first-team and he was still a young player in Barcelona C, alternating between Barça C and the U19s.

“The club realised that he had innate talent and that he was a player who take those steps quickly.

“He went through the U19s, Barça C and Barça B and he was in the first team within three or four months. With these special players, you know they are going to have a very quick journey through the lower categories.”

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The Messi comparisons

Lopez’s experience of having been a team-mate to Messi and a coach to Yamal means he is well placed to comment on the parallels between the two. Can the teenager get to that kind of level? Is he already there?

“One of Messi’s great strengths, one of the many strengths that he had, was that he knew how to run the team,” says Lopez.

“He knew how to make the team play, from a midfield position, or from that position on the right wing, going inside.

“He knew when it was necessary for him to lead the team, when to accelerate the play, and when he had to say, ‘Hey, the team is not playing well today, but I am, so I am going to decide this game, I am going to break it open.’

“That is what I think Lamine still needs a little bit. But, over time, he is going to get it.

“We have to remember that he is a boy right now.

“In 10 years, he will still only be 27 and he will have a 10-year professional career behind him.”

Lopez chuckles at the ludicrousness of that last line. But he points out that Yamal’s experiences with the U19s showed him the importance of taking responsibility, and of buying into the collective.

“What was really interesting was exposing him to the U19 group and seeing him realise that he had great talent, but that a player alone can’t win games,” says Lopez.

“He needs the support of his team-mates to grow, and to realise that he also needs to help the team himself.

“That is what he is now showing. Not only is he demonstrating his individual talent in terms of dribbling and shooting and everything else, but he is also helping the team, which is very important.”

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When Leo met Lamine

The parallels between Messi and Yamal were already unavoidable, but the emergence of this photograph - and the unlikely nature of its origins - takes the connection to a whole other level.

In 2007, Yamal's family won the chance to have their six-month-old baby be part of a photoshoot with a Barcelona player for a calendar that was being made to raise money for charities.

Coincidentally, Messi, 20 at the time and in the early stages of his Barcelona career, was the player chosen for Yamal.

Joan Monfort was the photographer that day, but it was only recently, like the rest of us, that he discovered what he had been a part of.

"I felt very happy when I found out," he tells Sky Sports. "I'm happy that this photo has been seen around the world."

Had it not been for Mounir Nasraoui, the teenage star's father, posting the photographs on social media, the images may have never come into public knowledge.

Messi and Sheila Ebana, Yamal's mother, are all smiles in the photograph above, but Monfort admits it wasn't the easiest photoshoot.

"Messi is a very shy boy, very introverted," he says. "He is now and it was much more so before. It took a while for him to interact with a six-month-old baby.

"But in the end, the truth is that they both did a lot. Lamine was a very nice boy. He won Messi over in a short time."

Seventeen years on and Yamal is sure to have won Messi over again, along with the rest of us.

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'Touched by the wand of God'

Yamal’s temperament has played a major part in his rapid ascent to stardom but the biggest factor is of course his extraordinary ability.

De la Fuente describes him as being "touched by the wand of God”. Xavi calls him an "era-defining talent". Both quickly gave up on trying to downplay expectations and the same has been true of Flick, who has labelled him a "genius"

Lopez, meanwhile, views him as a logic-defyingly good, the kind of player a coach can ultimately only guide and encourage.

“Lamine has an innate talent that you cannot mould,” he explains.

“What I mean by this is that he is a boy who is capable of doing things that are not logical, but that end up working out for him because of the talent he has.

“Like, for example, when he has a defender next to him and he goes inside, as he does with those diagonal runs he makes towards goal.

“He has a very, very good left foot and he likes to take the ball from close to the opposition’s left-sided centre-back towards the right-sided centre-back in order to shoot.

“He does it so quickly, and he has so much talent, that it works out for him.

“Logic says that for every 10 times you do that, cutting inside and shooting from where the centre-back is positioned, it will go wrong maybe eight times.

“But with him it’s the other way around. He has so much talent that eight or nine times out of 10, it works out well.”

Those darting runs inside have become a feature of his game. “He is a false winger, if you like, playing on the right wing but using his natural foot on the inside,” adds Lopez.

“When he started with us in the U19s, I tried to encourage him to have that versatility of playing on the right but using his left foot.

“I think it went well because it helped him realise that if he could offer something unique on that right wing, he would surely have that position locked down.

“At the same time, he realised that if he was not so unique, relative to his team-mates, he might have to fill in on the left or right, rather than owning one position.

“What he did, with the talent he had, is adapt very well to that right wing role of using his left foot on the inside.”

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From schoolboy to superstar

Inter, like most of Barcelona and Spain's opponents over the last two years, found out first-hand just how deadly that left foot can be.

He is Barcelona's most dangerous player. It is some going for a schoolboy of only 17.

Lopez, like everyone back in La Masia, is following his progress closely. Astonishingly, it is only two years since he made the step from academy to first-team. It is only three since he went from U16s to U19s. He has had to grow up quickly.

“Nowadays, everything is very fast,” says Lopez. “Sometimes, I would like it to be a little more gradual, as it was in our time, a little more step by step, so that a player can enjoy the time when football is fun and not work.

“But in the end, that is just society today. Players like Lamine who go so quickly to the world of professional football skip two or three years in which the game is still a hobby for them.”

It is to his credit, and to the credit of those who have helped him this far, that he has taken it all in his stride. “Of course, I am very proud to have participated in his development, along with many others,” adds Lopez.

“Your job as a youth coach is to try to improve the players, to ensure that each one has a good grounding, and a backpack of knowledge, if you like, to take with them.”

Yamal, this schoolboy-cum-superstar, certainly has that. Comparisons to Maradona and Messi no longer feel premature. But Yamal’s potential for greatness is clear.

Lamine Yamal is Next Up.

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Contents page

• Introduction
• Yamal's 'gigantic step' at La Masia
• Studying for exams at Euro 2024
• Why it was only ever a matter of time
• The Messi comparisons
• When Leo met Lamine - the story behind the viral photos
• A 'logic-defying' talent explained
• From schoolboy to superstar