How 2 finals - one featuring the king, the other the heir - may change football
The final of the Copa America and the European championship will be thousands of miles apart but it will be united in Messi and Yamal tracing their roots to FC Barcelona
Lionel Messi isn’t stopping. Lamine Yamal is just about beginning. On Sunday, they will aim to make Argentina and Spain the best football teams on either side of the Atlantic in what could be as much a passing of the baton as it is a coming together of the reigning monarch and the heir apparent across continents and time zones.
The final of the Copa America and the European championship will be thousands of miles apart but it will be united in Messi and Yamal tracing their roots to FC Barcelona. A union amplified by a photograph on social media of a 20-year-old Messi cradling a six-month-old Yamal.
If he wins, this would be only Messi’s second Copa title. Odd, you would think, for the greatest player of this generation, who has won four Champions League titles, been a Spanish league champion 10 times and the French league twice. But between his last Copa and this, Messi also took home a World Cup – and went from being vilified to venerated like Diego Maradona always will be in Argentina – meaning in two years he had won more than in 15 years of international football before that. Can you blame him for not wanting to stop even at 37?
“As I have said before, I intend to continue,” Messi said after Argentina beat Canada 2-0 to make the final, where they will meet Colombia. He said he would leave the decision about his ending to – God.
That he had scored against Canada, his 109th goal for Argentina was also his first in this Copa, could have been one reason for his mood. That the final is at Hard Rock Stadium, a short drive from his club Inter Miami, could be another. That USA is co-hosting the 2026 World Cup with Mexico and Canada, and Messi, by all accounts, is happy in Miami – his arrival being quite the event with A-listers like LeBron James, Serena Williams and Kim Kardashian coming to his early matches – could be a third.
Messi, who is no longer the consistent powerhouse he was at his peak, was speaking hours after Yamal had put Spain in the final of the European championship with a wonder strike that announced his arrival after weeks of chatter that he may be the next big thing. Both king and heir were adjudged player of the match in the respective semi-finals.
To say Yamal has lit up a German summer of football would be saying the obvious. Unless they are as staggering as Messi’s, numbers rarely tell a football story well. One goal and three assists hardly convey the explosive impact Yamal has had on Euro 2024. His performance on the right wing has often bordered on the audacious, his goal against France helped Spain equalise and gave them the self-belief they needed to push for a win. He arrived in Germany as a starlet. He will leave a star.
“We saw a touch of genius from a footballer who we all need to take care of,” said Spain coach Luis de la Fuente after Yamal, at 16 years and 362 days, became the youngest ever scorer in the history of the Euros. He is nearly two years younger than previous record holder Jonathan Vonlanthen of Switzerland who was 18 years and 141 days when he scored against France in Euro 2004.
By the time the final kicks off in Berlin, Yamal will be 17. Still not old enough to drink or drive. Even Pele was older when he played his first World Cup final in 1958. Pele was 17 years and 239 days old when he scored his first World Cup goal, against Wales in the quarter-final.
Before the semi-final, France’s Adrien Rabiot had said if Yamal is to play the final, he would have to do more than what he had done so far. Yamal’s retort on Instagram was a subtle, “Move in silence, speak only when it is time.” His goal, leaving Rabiot swaying helplessly, was a more emphatic statement of intent. England, who play Spain in the final in Berlin, will want to watch their words.
“Fundamentally I celebrate that he’s on our team…and we hope we can enjoy him for years to come,” said De la Fuente, his words echoing what everyone said about Messi not long after his Spanish league debut as a long-haired substitute on October 16, 2004. Messi then was as old as Yamal would be in October (including Yamal, Barcelona have had six debutants younger than Messi). And Yamal has already played 50 games for Barcelona, clocking 2196 minutes in the Spanish league last season, scoring seven goals and registering 10 assists across all competitions.
Yamal was 15 years, nine months and 16 days when he started for Barcelona against Real Betis in April 2023. He is the league’s youngest scorer (at 16 years and 87 days) and the youngest to start a Champions League match (16 years, 83 days).
His talent is one part of the reason why Yamal got so much of first-team football instead of being allowed to develop with the reserves. A long list of injuries and Barcelona’s inability to buy because of financial problems were the others. Pedri and Ansu Fati were two young players whose careers had suffered, still suffering in Fati’s case, due to long injury lay-offs but often, Barcelona did not have a choice. And rarely did Yamal let them down.
If Messi made his first team debut in a friendly against Porto in November 2003 and broke through only in 2005-06, it was also because Barcelona had in Samuel Eto’o, Deco, Andres Iniesta among others to choose from.
The details of Messi reaching Barcelona from Argentina as a 13-year-old, the initial agreement on a napkin (so famous that it sold for $969,000 last May), the club funding his growth hormone deficiency treatment, training at the famous La Masia academy, is well known. Messi stayed for 18 years, scoring a record 672 goals. Loosely termed tiki-taka, and much hated by then manager Pep Guardiola, Barcelona style of possession football fetched trophies – Messi alone won over 30 – and wowed the world. Messi left only because of the club’s severe financial problems. At his farewell press conference in 2021, Messi wept and he wasn’t the only one in the room.
With Yamal, the story goes that when he was young – okay, younger – he was told that one day Barcelona would come calling. They did, and signed him after one look. He was seven. Barcelona haven’t looked back and neither has this prodigy whose father is originally from Morocco and mother from Equatorial Guinea.
Reports describe him as a boy who even after signing a three-year contract with Barcelona in 2023 hasn’t forgotten his friends and is shy and humble (unless needled by Rabiot).
Proof of that also came in what Yamal had to say about Messi recently. Messi, he said, is the best footballer ever. No one is going to be Messi, he said with a warning that such comparisons can break a player. If he has half the career of Messi, he would be happy, Yamal said. Exactly the kind of “humility” and “maturity” De La Fuente said he hoped Yamal would continue to show.
A 40-minute drive from Barcelona, Rocafonda is where Yamal still calls home. Rosario is a lot farther from where Messi stays now. But on Sunday, they will be linked by FC Barcelona’s, and perhaps football’s, past and present.
