Lamine Yamal wore the crown and flew the flag. With the last kick of the opening game of 2025-26, Barcelona’s new No 10 – the teenager handed the shirt Ladislao Kubala, Luis Suárez, Diego Maradona, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho and Lionel Messi once wore, the kid Spain coach, Luis de la Fuente, had claimed was “touched by God’s wand” and had been anointed by Him too – scored against Mallorca. It was his first goal as an adult and he celebrated by conducting his own coronation. La Liga’s title race had begun.
The day after it had been run, nine months on, as Barcelona’s bus made its way through the streets, from the top deck of the victory parade Lamine Yamal held a Palestine flag.
“This is something I don’t normally like but I spoke to him and if he wants to it’s his decision,” Hansi Flick said. “He’s old enough: he’s 18.” Coming of age in the public eye wasn’t easy – isn’t easy – and the season hadn’t been either. There had been injuries and, Lamine Yamal later admitted, an “internal abyss”, but he had his third league title. Flick, the father figure whose own dad died on the morning they won the league and chose to share that with his other “family”, had his second. Have you ever felt so much love, the coach was asked. “No, never,” he said.
