Let’s wind back to a year ago. Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal has turned 16. He has already made his Barcelona debut, aged 15 years and 290 days when he came on for Gavi in front of 88,530 against Real Betis in April 2023.
After that game, Barca's then coach Xavi Hernandez said: “He’s someone who could define an era at this club. I had no concern about calling him up. He has natural talent, he’s daring and he can help us, however young he is. Youngsters these days tend to have great confidence. I look at them and it’s very different from my day. They’re fearless.”
Everyone at Barcelona is saying positive things about the child in their ranks. In part because they believe it, in part because they want to believe it and in part because they need to believe it, such are the financial pressures at the Catalan club.
Outside the Barca world, there’s not too much attention. Child prodigies come out of La Masia every year. Some justify the expectations, most notably Lionel Messi. Others gradually fade away and while they have good careers in football, like Bojan Krkic, Giovanni dos Santos or Munir El Haddadi, they don’t define eras.
In Manchester, Kobbie Mainoo is impressing so much in pre-season training that Erik ten Hag confides in staff that he’s ready to play for the first team. It helps that his players are telling him the same.
Casemiro’s English has come on to the point that he was able to describe Mainoo as ‘top’ to his manager, with an expletive before description. This was a surprise since United thought the next stage of his development was adjusting to playing with more physical top-flight professionals and he was working hard behind the scenes to make sure he coped.
He was also encouraged to be a bit more progressive with his passing, whether that’s longer passes or breaking lines. But he has good people advising him.
Coach Darren Fletcher is integral to Mainoo’s progress, putting an arm around him when needed, encouraging and advising. Mainoo is told that he’ll go on United’s pre-season tour with the first team. He’d just turned 18.
Mainoo continues to impress but he’s injured early in a pre-season friendly against Real Madrid in Houston. United wouldn’t have signed Sofyan Amrabat from Fiorentina on loan had Mainoo been fit.
Mainoo’s injury is a frustration, but most fans don’t know what they’ve not seen, though watchers of the youth team had been encouraged by the player United spotted playing for Cheadle & Gatley near Stockport and brought him into club’s academy.
And while he was in that academy system a long time, he was never a ‘wow’ prospect, partly because United knew how good he was and played him in older age groups alongside more mature boys to stretch him.
United’s coaches admired Mainoo’s consistency, which is rare among younger players. Consistency in his performances but also in his head. He was never too high or too low. They considered his strengths to be his athleticism, close control, awareness and body contacts, his ability in both boxes and combative nature – in short a nice blend of many skills.
United also play him as a number 6, 8 and 10 and he was adept in all, showing the makings of a good football brain and an athletic capability to play throughout the pitch and in different roles and systems.
Mainoo was popular with his teammates. Quiet, unassuming, never a shouter but someone who thinks about the game and lets his football do the talking.
While injury would keep Mainoo away from playing football for four months, Yamal is flying. He’s quickly, and surprisingly, earned the respect of experienced professionals in training and they give him the ball because they trust him – both the tough passes and the easy passes. They recognise that he could do anything with the ball.
At Barca, Yamal played just 23 minutes of B team football in Spain’s third tier before playing 50 times for the first team in 2023-24, scoring seven and making 10 assists. He excels so much that the concern is that he’s been overplayed, a criticism levelled at the use of Pedri and Gavi, two sublime youngsters who did likewise before getting seriously injured.
He became the youngest ever to play for Barcelona on his early debut in 2022, then 16 years and 38 days, the youngest in the 21st century to start a La Liga game, the youngest to score in the league, to start a Champions league game (16 years, 83 days), to play in a Clasico, to score in the Copa del Rey.
In May, he became the youngest to make 50 appearances for Barcelona’s first team. He’d represented Spain at under 15, 16, 17 and 19 level – yet he was doing things in reverse. He played for Spain’s under 16s before the under 15s and he was only 16 years and one month old when he made his full Spain debut.
At United, Mainoo makes his first Premier League start at Everton in November and it’s stunning. Commentators and fans learn to pronounce his name correctly: “It’s Kobbie like Robbie but with a K,” his father told us.
It became a cliche that he looked like he’d played hundreds of games for the club at the highest level. His winner at Wolves was one of the season’s best moments and he earns a place on the cover of the United We Stand fanzine.
He sees that at Carrington the morning after the goal at Wolves and says: “That’s sick.” He finishes the season well and scores in the FA Cup final, coolly celebrating with a red and white beanie hat on. United think that Mainoo is level-headed but his life is undergoing a massive change and there will invariably be dips.
For their clubs, both youngsters have impressed deeply, but expectations were low that they could do the same for their countries so quickly, though Mainoo had been outstanding for England against the Netherlands and Belgium at Under-18 level under his former United youth coach Neil Ryan.
As recently as December 2022 when England played in the World Cup finals, Mainoo featured in a Manchester United side made up of youngsters who played two mid-season friendlies in an unseasonably wet southern Spain against Cadiz and Real Betis.
Mainoo’s father Felix was there to support his son, happily mixing with the few diehard fans who’d attend a mid-season friendly comprised of youth players. The family are of Ghanaian heritage and Kobbie could have played for Ghana or England, where he was born.
Lamal also had a choice of Spain – the country where he was born – or Morocco, the country of his father. He chose Spain and he’s thriving. He’s becoming a superstar and interest in him has exploded.
On Tuesday, he had 9,060,132 Instagram followers. A day later, on July 10, this number had increased to 11,120,376 – over two million in a day. This surge in interest online was because of his stunning goal against France in the semi-final, an altercation with Adrien Rabiot and a photo, which went viral, of Messi holding Yamal when he was a baby.
When he scored against France, he crossed his hands over his chest and used his fingers to spell out the number 304. They’re the digits in the postal code of the Racafonda barrio where he grew up in Mataro, a working-class coastal city 20 miles north of Barcelona. He’s proud of his neighbourhood, proud to represent Spain.
He’s long effectively lived on the other side of the Catalan province – at Barca’s La Masia, learning his trade in an environment protected 24/7. He’s respectful to older players and lives a stable life. He must study his schoolwork and behave responsibly.
He – along with Athletic Club’s Nico Williams – are being celebrated in Spain as successful examples of immigrant children. Williams’ parents jumped over the fence surrounding the Spanish African enclave of Melilla in search of a better life. This is one antidote to the right-wing rhetoric in Spanish politics where immigrant families are demonised.
Mainoo and Yamal face each other in Berlin on Sunday evening in the final of Euro 2024, two emerging football stars who have excelled in the tournament despite their youth.
Mainoo has become increasingly important for England as the tournament has progressed, though the relationship between Manchester United fans and the England national team is complicated. You see few Manchester or United England flags amid the massive following in Germany, with club football a clear priority over country.
But Mainoo is proud to play for his country. An image of him from Dortmund’s scoreboard before Wednesday’s semi-final triumph against the Netherlands above the words ‘God Save The King’ has gone viral among fans. That’s 'King Kobbie', as opposed to King Charles.
