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Something is happening with Lamine Yamal<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Lionel Messi<\/a> comparisons have followed Yamal from the moment he burst onto the scene, and they\u2019ve often been unhelpful. Why burden a teenager with the legacy of the greatest of all time? Yet with every passing year of Yamal\u2019s fledgling career, Messi as a reference point becomes increasingly unavoidable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Messi was (obviously) brilliant before Pep Guardiola\u2019s arrival at Barcelona<\/a> in the summer of 2008.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Argentinian had already lifted the Champions League trophy, had won multiple league titles and finished runner-up on the Ballon d\u2019Or podium that year \u2013 coming second to Cristiano Ronaldo would help set the stage for a rivalry that would define the next 15 or so years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The talent was unmistakable. It was clear from the manner in which Chelsea\u2019s Asier del Horno resorted to kicking Messi out of a Champions League game when he was still a teenager.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n You only had to watch him in La Liga<\/a>, or hear Ronaldinho talk about him, to realise this was something different. A freakish prodigy, spoken about in the same breath as Ronaldo Nazario and Diego Maradona.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Messi was getting better with every season, notching 13 goals and 16 assists for a flawed, third-place and trophyless Barcelona side in 2007-08.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Then came Guardiola. In 2008-09, Messi took the biggest leap of his career, transforming into an unstoppable force of nature and arguably the best footballer we\u2019d ever seen. He was the undisputed star of a Barcelona side that swept to the treble.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cMessi is the best player in the world by a distance, he\u2019s the No.1,\u201d Xavi Hernandez said ahead of the 2009 Champions League final.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThere is nobody at all like him. I don\u2019t want to compare him to anyone because it\u2019ll just damage the other player if I do. For me Messi is easily the best.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cAll due respect to Ronaldo and all the other great players on the world stage, but Messi is proving that he is better than \u00adeveryone else.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe world can see that he\u2019s the boss. I\u2019ve never seen anything like it. In a game, in the training sessions, never. I wouldn\u2019t swap him for any player.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Yamal is a few years ahead of where Messi was at the same age<\/a>, but he looks to be approaching that same inflection point.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Not only is the La Masia wonderkid younger, but these early breakthrough years are arguably even more eye-catching than Messi\u2019s were. He\u2019s already won a European Championship and World Cup, and played a starring role in back-to-back La Liga title triumphs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Rewatch his performance against Inter<\/a> in the Champions League semi-finals, when he was only 17, and you\u2019re struck with the same sense of otherworldly awe as Messi when he scored his first career hat-trick against Real Madrid<\/a>. He\u2019s already finished runner-up in the Ballon d\u2019Or, and you\u2019re once again left with a feeling of inevitability.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cHe has the quality to win the Ballon d\u2019Or. The question is when he will win it,\u201d Feyenoord manager Giovanni Van Bronckhorst told reporters ahead of Yamal\u2019s Champions League masterclass.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But there\u2019s been a gap between what Yamal has achieved and the output you\u2019d associate with the very best. He only scored one goal at the World Cup. His numbers have been good, outstanding for a player of his age, but they\u2019re some way off prime Messi, or peak-age superstars like Harry Kane or Kylian Mbappe<\/a>. He has not (yet) found himself registering goals or assists as a matter of course every single week.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Until now. Three braces in as many La Liga games suggest we might be witnessing a great leap forward unfold before our eyes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It almost feels trite \u2013 taking away some of the joy \u2013 to invoke statistics when it comes to discussing such brilliance. To paraphrase Pep Guardiola: just watch him. That gives you a sense of the magic that an algorithm rating out of 10 never can.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Except this is football in 2026, and those scores are genuinely a pretty good benchmark for what you\u2019re watching.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Consider Messi. He averaged above an 8.00 rating from WhoScored in every season between 2009-10 and 2020-21. Twelve years of unreal dominance, with the numbers simply reflecting what we were seeing with our eyes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n To put that in context, only one player in the whole of La Liga \u2013 Lamine Yamal<\/a>, with 8.23 \u2013 managed that last season. And Yamal\u2019s score was still lower than Messi\u2019s worst of the lot: 8.34 in 2013-14.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Yamal\u2019s scores this season? 7.87. 10. 9.89. 8.69. That averages out at 8.63 in La Liga. Not to mention another perfect 10 against Feyenoord. In other words, he\u2019s in the Messi zone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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