Steven Gerrard has broken down what he sees in Lamine Yamal on The Overlap Daily, and the former Liverpool and England captain did not hold back. According to Gerrard, the Barcelona and Spain winger is already past the teenage versions of the two players who have shaped the last two decades of football.
“He’s doing things on a football pitch that I’ve never seen a 19-year-old do,” Gerrard told The Overlap Daily. “He’s more advanced than Ronaldo was at 19. I played against Messi as a youngster, and he’s probably more advanced than he was too.”
Gerrard shared a pitch with both as a Liverpool and England midfielder, which gives the comparison weight that most pundit talk cannot carry. He also placed Yamal narrowly ahead of Kylian Mbappé and Erling Haaland in the current generation, telling the podcast that Mbappé and Haaland are in their prime years “but it seems to me that Lamine is just a bit above that.”
The challenge Gerrard sees
The praise came with a condition. Gerrard said the hardest part of the next few years will be keeping Yamal hungry after this much adulation, and framed that as the single biggest challenge facing the teenager. He also raised the questions that cannot yet be answered: whether Yamal can match the consistency Messi and Ronaldo produced across more than a decade, and whether his goal totals will ever reach theirs.
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Injured knee, England waiting
The timing lands in the middle of Spain’s international break. Yamal pulled out of the squad for Thursday’s trip to Prague to face Czechia on 12 November after reporting discomfort in his right knee following Barcelona’s win over Atlético Madrid on Sunday.
The Royal Spanish Football Federation said the issue is being managed as a precaution, with no structural damage reported, and Spain are hoping to have him available for the England match later in the week.
Spain host England in Madrid on Sunday, 15 November, with kick-off at 20:45 local time. Both sides share a four-team Group A3 with Croatia and Czechia.
A record to measure against
Yamal arrived at the international break off the back of a season in which he registered 16 goals and 11 assists in La Liga and finished as the division’s top assist provider in Barcelona’s title-winning campaign. He added six goals and four assists in ten Champions League matches, and scored the first professional hat-trick of his career against Villarreal on 28 February.
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