Cristian Tello does not think Lamine Yamal would have forced his way into Barcelona’s starting XI in 2012. The former Barcelona winger, who announced his retirement from football in September 2026, told Spanish newspaper Sport that the attack Barcelona had assembled by that point would have made the pathway almost impossible, no matter how precocious a teenager was coming through La Masia.

“Starting? I don’t think so. It would have been difficult for him to break through,” Tello told Sport.

Tello picked out the names himself.

“As I said, we are talking about Alexis Sánchez, Pedro, Villa, Messi and Neymar. It is extremely difficult for any player coming through the academy to find a place among them in the first team.”

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A different Barcelona now

Tello sees the current side as a different world for a 17- or 18-year-old. In Hansi Flick’s squad, teenagers are no longer the exception: the 27-man first-team list includes several La Masia graduates, with Yamal, Pau Cubarsí and Fermín López all first-choice.

“Yes, it is more exceptional now. The first team currently has a very large number of young players, so it becomes easier for them to break through,” Tello told the newspaper.

“In our time, because there were far more players who were already well established in the top flight, it was more difficult for us to break through.”

Flick’s “juggernaut”

Tello was blunt about what he sees from the current team under Flick, who signed a contract extension in May 2026 that runs through June 2028.

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“I like it a lot. As we said before, because of the players he has in attack, he likes to have a great deal of speed out wide. Now they are a juggernaut. We hope they can continue like this for a long time.”

Yamal and the Ballon d’Or

The timing of Tello’s comments is loaded. Yamal, who turned 19 in July, finished second to Ousmane Dembélé in the 2025 Ballon d’Or and is one of the leading candidates for the 2026 award, behind only Harry Kane in Goal’s power rankings. The 2026 ceremony is scheduled for Monday 26 October at the London Palladium, the first time in the award’s 70-year history that it has been held outside France.

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