Lamine Yamal has drawn some lofty comparisons of late, with the Champions League stage exposing a wider audience to his prodigious talent. Yet while the world has rushed to compare him to Lionel Messi, he reserved some of his own praise for Liverpool.
It was an outrageous display against Inter from Yamal, which included a goal almost painfully reminiscent of Messi himself — while a certain Mohamed Salah would have been proud of it too. Dancing his way through a crowd of players, he found the corner with a delightful, curling, left-foot finish.
The biggest challenge that seems to be facing Yamal is how to keep his feet on the ground. Yet despite his obvious brilliance, he has so far remained impressively humble, and comments about Arne Slot’s Liverpool earlier in the Champions League campaign reflected as much.
Barcelona’s adventure in Europe could easily have looked very different. Finishing second to Liverpool in the league phase, an open draw determined who would get Benfica and who would get PSG.
Liverpool got stuck with PSG: some reward for topping the league. Following a 1-0 win at Arsenal, the French giant now has one foot in the final, where it could very plausibly face Barcelona in the showpiece event.
But while that’s galling for Slot, and raises some questions about the new format, it doesn’t take anything away from Barcelona. You can only play the teams you are drawn against, and Hansi Flick’s men have repeatedly risen to the occasion, inspired by Yamal more often than not.
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However, after the conclusion of the league phase, Yamal gave credit to Liverpool. He acknowledged Slot’s team as the favorite:
“It depends on us,” Yamal told Mundo Deportivo when asked about the possibility of a treble, which still remains on the cards. “There is only one team in the Champions League that is more favored than us, and that is Liverpool because they finished first.”
It was a similar story even after Liverpool’s elimination. Yamal accepted that Barcelona had moved into pole position, but only because Slot’s men were out of the way.
“We are not afraid of any team, we are a family,” Yamal insisted. “And we’re not the same as one year ago against PSG [who beat Barcelona at the quarter-final stage last season]. “When the group stage ended, I said Liverpool were the favorites because they were first, and now that they’ve fallen, it’s us.”
(Image: DARREN STAPLES/AFP via Getty Images)
Of course, Yamal was only going off the league table as his guide. But it speaks volumes about the great work Slot has done in such a short space of time.
After just eight games in the Champions League, he had successfully restored Liverpool to its status as perhaps the most feared team in Europe. Moving into next season, it will no doubt maintain a similar fear factor, having strolled to the Premier League title under Slot’s guidance.
It’s disappointing to only be watching the business end of this year’s Champions League as a neutral. But Yamal is certainly providing plenty of entertainment value, and the PSG meeting that could so easily have been Barcelona’s fate at the Round of 16 would make for a mouth-watering final.
