Lamine Yamal has emerged as one of the standout stars of the season, proving to be a scarce source of positivity for Barcelona in recent months.
The 16-year-old delivered yet another impressive performance on Friday, with his remarkable second-half goal clinching a slender victory over Mallorca. This victory propelled Xavi Hernandez's team to second place in the La Liga table.
Yamal has earned plenty of praise for his performance in Montjuic and one of them is Mallorca manager Javier Aguirre, albeit in an unconventional manner. He compared the youngster to a mouse when addressing the media after the match, as reported by MD.
"I saw Messi as fast as a rat years ago.. and Lamine also moves as quickly as a rat.. if he keeps this up, Lamine is going to bring a lot of joy to Barça. Cubarsi seems less effective in deciding games, while Lamine has what it takes to define matches," Aguirre said at a press conference.
The coach of Mallorca also spoke right after the match and admitted that they are superior, but today I believe the team showed its true colours before praising the young Barça winger once again.
"You have to applaud that goal, there's no other way around it. We put in a great effort but in the end, it wasn't enough for us. Even though worthy defeats sting, we can be proud of the work we put in," said Aguirre, who despite the loss, was not entirely disappointed with his players' performance and hopes they can take away some positive lessons from their trip to Barcelona.
"We need to recognise the collective and individual efforts, or else the players will lose confidence. Playing against Barça as visitors is always a tough challenge," mentioned the Mallorca coach, who emphasised that "the number of turnovers we had in our own half was astonishing" and highlighted that "sometimes there's a lack of quality and poor decision-making" that hinders achieving better results.