There's a photo that's been doing the rounds recently. It's of an old Leo Messi photoshoot, a Messi with a long hair parted down the middle, shy smile firmly in place, holding a baby... and for some reason it wasn't the great Argentine who was the centre of attention.
The reason for that was made clear when an Instagram handle called hustle_hard_304 put a different version of it up with the caption "the beginning of two legends".
Two?
Well, the Instagram profile belongs to a man named Mounir, and the baby in the picture is his son, named Lamine.
On Tuesday, under the cover of a warm Munich evening, that boy would create history: Lamine Yamal, 16 years and 362 days old, the youngest ever scorer at a men's Euro or World Cup match, a record previously held by a man simply known as Pele.
Yamal's age has been hammered on about for a year now, over the course of 50 appearances for Barcelona last season and a European Championship tournament that he has lit up (most chances created, most assists made) and if it had started to take the quality of an overused phase, it was firmly brought back to centre-stage in this Euro 2024 semifinal. No one has the right to be this good at 16, surely?
Especially considering the circumstances. The twenty minutes and twelve seconds before he'd touched the ball at around the 25m mark of the French half hadn't been going according to plan for Spain. France, veterans of these stages, had started with purpose, counterattacking brilliantly and had taken the lead inside eight minutes. With Jesus Navas on a yellow, a freshly unmasked Kylian Mbappe was threatening to take over, as he so often does big games for his country.
On their part, Spain had passed and prodded and passed some more but the vast wall of white in front of them had a strong sense of impenetrability. This was Didier Deschamps' France after all, masters of the 1-0, everyone (except Mbappe) primed to defend first. Spain, who had not reached a major final since 2012, looked a bit lost in the face of this juggernaut...
...and then Yamal happened.
When he got the ball after a couple of ricochets - with 23:13 on the clock - there really wasn't much on. He'd drifted in, as is his wont, from his station on the left but the middle was firmly packed. In between him and Mike Maignan's goal were seven men in white.
His first touch opened his body up, and those in front of him braced for a shot. His second was to drop a shoulder and cut right, and the two immediately in front - Adrien Rabiot and William Saliba - followed suit. Another shoulder drop, this time without touching the ball and suddenly he was going left again, and Rabiot and Saliba were twisting around in the vain hope of keeping up. But Yamal's third touch was to push the ball out of his feet... and by the time he connected with his left foot, neither Rabiot nor Saliba were in any way an obstruction. Left, right, left and he'd sent the two for a quick coffee.
There was a lot to do still, though. In goal, Maignan is one of the best in the world, and to beat him from 25 yards, it would take something special. Which is what Yamal produced, arcing a curler high over a backtracking Dayot Upamecano's head, and placing it outside the far post, from where it would viciously curl in, kiss the post and fly into the goal. Even at full stretch, Maignan stood no chance. If the shimmy to create space had been wonderful, what came after that was pure magic.
���� Magnificent Yamal! @Vivo_GLOBAL | #EUROPOTM pic.twitter.com/nFlMcvG3w7
- UEFA EURO 2024 (@EURO2024) July 9, 2024
Five minutes later, Yamal's movement inside would again weaken the French defence long enough for Dani Olmo to score a superb goal. 2-1 and that's how it would stay... Yamal sparkling down the Spanish right all evening long.
Before the match, Rabiot had teased his young opponent, saying "to play in a Euro final he will have to do much more than what he has done so far". During it Yamal had twisted Rabiot's blood en-route doing just that. He would then victoriously yell at the camera "speak now, speak now." Hah.
Already Spain's most important attacker, it's his incessant directness, his willingness to shoot and cross early, his non-stop running that is defining this new era for Spain under Luis de la Fuente. Now it's his history-making that's got them into their first major final in 12 years.
"Two legends", eh Mounir? There's a long way to go still -- many a peak and valley to ford -- but his young boy's career got off to some start.
For producing one of the most magical moments in major tournament history, Lamine Yamal takes our Moment of the Day for day 20 of Euro 2024.