“I do not know, JordiI don’t know, look, he runs with his feet turned inwards.” “Wow! I hadn’t noticed, Aurelius“You’re right. What’s more, look, his knees are knocking against each other, it’s weird to see him run.” Jordi Roura y Aurelius Altimirafired summarily from the Barça Just arrived John Laportafor the second time, to the presidency of the ‘more than a club’were in charge of supervising and, often, giving the go-ahead, the OK, to the incorporation of children, real 6-year-old children, into the Barça discipline.
What these two inseparable friends were watching was simply one of the many, many little games of ‘7-a-side football’ between 6-year-old children from all corners of Catalonia. That was, is, one of the ways of selecting the ‘players’, no, the children, the football projects, that the ‘scouting’ that Barça has distributed and organised by zones throughout Catalonia propose.
Pure intuition, nothing more
That is to say, there comes a time when those children, even if they are 6 years old, have to be seen by someone, someone who must help make the decision and, above all, “someone who is not addicted, infected, saturated with seeing children of that age, who all seem the same to you,” as one of the grassroots football coaches who has been in the league for years explains to El Periódico. The Farmhouse and he doesn’t want his name to be published so as not to have problems with his boss, Jose Ramon Alexancowhich prohibits them from speaking to journalists.
So the mission of Roura and Altimira, true creators of the saga that has saved Barça from further ruin, ‘fathers’ of the Ansu Fati, Lamine Yamal, Gavi o To cub (and more, many more), is not easy at all and, of course, is exposed to many successes, of course, but also to a huge number of errors. “Close your eyes,” Roura tells me, “and put 20 6-year-old children running after a ball. Whoever tells you that ‘I saw it very clearly, that child had a special aura’ is lying to you. I’ll tell you: at that age you don’t see anything. You intuit, maybe you guess, but seeing, seeing, you don’t see anything.”
“Anyone who tells you that at 6 years old they can already see that a child will be Lamine Yamal is lying to you. At that age, when you see 20 children running around chasing a ball, you only guess, but it is impossible to get it right.”
That’s right, that kid, who wandered around the grass as if it had nothing to do with him, ran with his feet turned inwards while his knees knocked against each other, but when the ball reached his feet, phew!, the world stopped and something always happened. Many times, a goal. “That’s why, after watching him for a while, we were convinced that he wasn’t a prodigy, you see how many times we got it right, but we realized that he had something and that, in a team of several dozen children, he, Lamine Yamalhad to be there, we shouldn’t lose him.”
The boy had arrived at that selection, that is, at the gates of La Masia, to the final exam of ‘7-a-side football’, because Isidre Gilone of the veterans and by far the best ‘scourting’ (scout, sniffing) that Barça has, had suggested to the pair of examiners that they try, that they see, that they take a look at a child who had caught his attention.
Lamine Yamal celebrates at the end of the UEFA Euro 2024 semi-final football match between Spain and France in Munich / MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP
That’s right, that kid, who wandered around the grass as if it had nothing to do with him, ran with his feet turned inwards while his knees knocked against each other, but when the ball reached his feet, phew!, the world stopped and something always happened. Many times, a goal. “That’s why, after watching him for a while, we were convinced that he wasn’t a prodigy, you see how many times we got it right, but we realized that he had something and that, in a team of several dozen children, he, Lamine Yamalhad to be there, we shouldn’t lose him.”
The boy had arrived at that selection, that is, at the gates of La Masia, to the final exam of ‘7-a-side football’, because Isidre Gilone of the veterans and by far the best ‘scourting’ (scout, sniffing) that Barça has, had suggested to the pair of examiners that they try, that they see, that they take a look at a child who had caught his attention.
“Yamal is not fast, he thinks fast! I mean he is not Adama Traoré, who is a bullet. War is not his thing. He never rushes, he never tries something he knows he will not succeed in. He never gets nervous, because he has endless resources to kill you.”
That is a decisive change. The teammates change, because they start to really compete against those who want to take their place. The size of the playing field changes. The ball changes and they start to have the need to win (always). “At that stage, many children, many young people, get lost, and many others surprise you, yes. The one who you thought would never make the leap, does it and the one in whom you had high hopes, disappears.”
Those who know explain that you see things, flashes, up until you are 15 or 16, but it is at that age that everything begins to become clear. “With Lamine we had, at first, doubts about finding the best position for him. Well, with Lamine and with many others. That is another delicate decision, which can catapult a career or sink it. Lamine was fast and could be a long-distance left-back. And he could be a fast winger, because he is very skilful and can score goals. He could be a false 9, so fashionable at Barça. And he could even be a great midfielder, because he understands football, the ‘tempo’ of the game wonderfully.”
He doesn’t want trouble
They say that the youngster’s opinion also counted. Yamal loved it, they never knew if it was to imitate Leo Messi, although it seems not, to play on the right wing to face (like the goal against France, that run and ‘messianic’ shot). And so they did. “I’m going to tell you something that, possibly, from the outside or to non-experts, sounds like bravado,” the anonymous Barça youth coach told me: “Yamal is not fast, he thinks fast! I mean he is not Adama Traoré, he is a bullet. Let’s go back to the fact that war is not his thing. He never rushes, he never tries something that he knows will not work out. He never gets nervous because he has infinite resources to kill you. And he knows it.”
It seems, indeed, that finding the ideal position for any child, for any promising player, is vital. “We had no doubts about Yamal. And yet, with Alejandro Balde we made a mistake at first,” explains Roura. “We put him on the wing and yes, but no. Getting there, yes; but being there, no. And we turned him into a great left-back. Of course, Balde had to be shaken up from time to time, because he played too relaxed, which does not mean overbearing.”
“I repeat,” Altimira insists, “without being ‘the bomb’, Yamal caught your eye in any category, in any team, in any competition. It is clear that, in football, the prodigy, what decides the games, the difference between a crack project and someone who will be good, but will simply make a living with football, is precisely in what Lamine did, does: take the ball, never rush, face the opponent like hell, look for the gap and, with that prodigious foot of his, put it in the top corner. And Lamine always showed us that.”
Lamine Yamal celebrates scoring his team’s first goal during the UEFA Euro 2024 semi-final between Spain and France / AFP
Yamal passed all the tests, he overcame all the sieves, which in a big club, in the youth football of all the big clubs, are devastating. “The jump from ‘soccer 7’ to ‘soccer 11’ is very demanding, very damaging. In fact, it seems like another sport. It has nothing to do with it. And there, Lamine, he stood out, he made the big jump and began to be seen as a young man with a huge, tremendous future.”
Our ‘deep throat’ from La Masia would like us not to lose sight of the fact that “we are talking about boys, young people, like Ansu Fati, Yamal, Fort, Cubarsi and several others with whom Barça, if they wanted to, could easily win not last year’s UEFA Youth League but the ones for the next two years. Many of them, for example, Ansu Fati and Yamal did something that no one has done: they jumped from the cadet to the U19 A, skipping three stages. That already shows their progression and, above all, their footballing maturity, which if you have observed, trained and lived with them, since they were 6 years old, it does not surprise you at all, not at all.
“It is very unfortunate that the three coaches who have done the most for the progression and development of Lamine Yamal, Jordi Roura, Aureli Altimira and, of course, Xavier Hernández, have been fired by Joan Laporta, who has also caused his friend Jorge Mendes to replace Iván de la Peña as the young star’s agent.
After being fired from Barça and taking a while to get paid, Roura and Altimira have continued to be involved and work in and for football. They watch, observe, advise, many parents contact them for advice and they, thanks to their experience, can help resolve delicate situations. In this sense, Roura and Altimira agree that Yamal is, without a doubt, a ‘pure Barça’ product. Or better yet, the perfect product of La Masia, understood as a way of life, of education, of coexistence, of studies, of development.
De la Peña, decisive
“Someone might consider my reflection exaggerated: Lamine Yamal would not have reached this high point if he and his family had not been advised by Iván de la Peña, who considered it vital that the child join La Masia,” says Altimira, who recalls that the Barça residence was not built or designed for children or young people from Barcelona, but for those projects of footballers from outside Barcelona, so that they could be educated, study, train and play without travelling to the Barça facilities every day.
But, in this sense, there have been two very important exceptions, which have been Lamine Yamal and, before him, Ilaix Moriba. “There is no need to go into details, we all believe that Yamal should be protected and De la Peña’s performance with the boy and his family, his advice, his way of supervising his progress was exemplary and, I repeat, he has turned this prodigious young man into the star that he is and generated so much excitement among the culés and, now, among the followers of ‘La Roja’.”
“In Berlin, with Lamine!” / Fermín de la calle
It is painful, even though many consider it part of the game, the industry, the business, the economy or the lack of common sense in football, that the three people, sorry, the four people who have contributed the most to making Lamine Yamal who he is, playing where he plays and succeeding as he has, have disappeared from his life or have been fired.
oak y Altimirafired by Laporta; just like Xavi Hernandezthe coach who made him debut in the big Barça (“all the teams in the world have very good young players, all of them, the only thing that is needed is a coach who makes them play”, said the maestro Johan Cruyff) e Ivan de la Peñawho led him by the hand until March 2023, disappeared from the life of this ball wizard in the face of the power of Jorge Mendesa personal friend of Laporta, who is the one who, now, directs the destiny of the young man who, at this moment, has stolen the headlines from the Mbappe, Vinicius Junior y Messi.
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2024-07-11 00:22:31
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