Lamine Yamal, the 18-year-old Spain winger who inherited Lionel Messi’s iconic Barcelona shirt number last season, described Messi’s performances at this World Cup as incredible and said he is genuinely happy for his childhood idol before adding, without hesitation, that he hopes to meet Argentina in the final and wants to win it.
Yamal was asked about Messi in the days following Argentina’s dramatic 3-2 comeback against Egypt, a match in which the 39-year-old provided an assist and scored in the closing stages to send the defending champions into the quarterfinals. Messi leads the Golden Boot race with eight goals and has scored in nine consecutive World Cup matches since 2022, a run of form that Yamal described as exceeding what anyone reasonably expected from a player his age.
A generation of idols and their final tournament
Yamal’s reflection extended beyond Messi to the broader generation of players who he said shaped the childhoods of everyone currently competing at the World Cup. He expressed happiness for Messi alongside warmth toward Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar, acknowledging what they gave to the sport during the years when he was growing up watching and dreaming.
The context behind those words carries some weight. It was Yamal’s Spain that ended Ronaldo’s World Cup journey on Monday, with Portugal losing by a single goal in a match that almost certainly marked the Portuguese captain’s last World Cup appearance. Ronaldo departed as the only player in history to have scored in six separate World Cup tournaments and remains the all-time leader in international goals and appearances. Neymar’s Brazil had already exited the previous day in the round of 16, ending a tournament that had been emotionally loaded given his long absence from the national team through injury.
Yamal’s honest assessment of his own form
Yamal was characteristically direct when assessing his own performances rather than simply the idols he was discussing. He noted that a two-month injury absence before the tournament means he is not yet at the peak rhythm a player needs to dominate consistently, and he said he believes he can do better than what he has shown so far. He expressed no anxiety about that gap, framing it as a matter of accumulating minutes and returning to full competitive sharpness.
He also offered a perspective on his own competitive pattern, suggesting that his best performances tend to arrive at the most important stages of tournaments rather than during the opening matches. He played his first full 90 minutes of the World Cup against Portugal in the round of 16 and described the experience of building back toward his natural level, saying that the bigger the match, the better he tends to play.
Spain’s focus heading into the Belgium quarterfinal
Spain face Belgium on Friday in Inglewood, California, with Yamal expressing genuine enthusiasm for the opportunity to demonstrate what the team and he individually are capable of. He described himself as feeling great heading into the match and looking forward to it as an occasion that should suit the kind of display he wants to produce.
His admiration for the players who preceded him, genuinely felt and openly expressed, coexists easily with his own clear competitive ambition. He praised Messi but was careful to clarify that if Spain advance to the final, he expects to beat whoever stands across from them. That combination of gratitude for the generation that came before him and complete confidence in his own ability to surpass them is perhaps the defining quality of how Yamal carries himself at 18.
