Barcelona wonderkid Lamine Yamal vows to ‘leave a legacy’ as he addresses comparisons to Lionel Messi

Barcelona wonderkid Lamine Yamal insists comparisons to Lionel Messi do not “bother” him, with the teenager determined to leave his own “legacy”.

Having made a senior breakthrough at just 15 years of age, Yamal is a now a record-shattering European Championship winner at 17. He has the world at his feet, with many tipping him to be a Ballon d’Or winner of the not too distant future.

Links to Barca icon Messi are never far away – as both stepped out of the famed La Masia academy system – and Yamal will not shy away from that discussion while bidding to write a memorable story of his own. He has told France Football after being named on the 30-man shortlist for the 2024 Ballon d’Or: “For me the most important thing is to leave a legacy, to have your career. In the end, being compared to Leo is more important than not looking at it. It is true that if you are compared to the best player in history it is because you are doing things well. It doesn’t bother me, obviously, but I try to always be myself.”

While Yamal, who met Messi when he was just a baby, has always looked up to an Argentine icon of the game, he added on his other role models: “I remember that Neymar was at Santos, Messi obviously… Messi, [David] Villa, Pedro… all from Barça. Those are the first images that made me see football. Since I was little, with my father and my mother at home, that’s the first thing I remember. We would meet after school at a friend’s house because he had a computer and we would put on videos of Neymar. We would spend the whole afternoon watching there.”

Yamal is now a superstar in his own right, as he follows in the illustrious footsteps of Messi, Neymar and Co. He has already weighed in with a number of goals and assists for Barca this season, while his next outing could come for Spain in their UEFA Nations League openers against Serbia and Switzerland.