20 years apart, Yamal and Messi chase greatness on the same day, the same way

Martin Rogers

FOX Sports Insider

BERLIN — Neither of them seem to run with the ball, they both glide with it. They don’t kick the thing, they manipulate it, bend it to their will, with exact pace and weight — so accurate that they might as well have picked it up and put it on the spot they intended.

Lionel Messi and Lamine Yamal. Just two superstars preparing for a major final on Sunday. Separated by 5,000 miles and 20 years. Connected by their respective excellence, by the potential of this being a passing the baton moment, and by their roots at a soccer talent factory beyond anything the world has ever seen.

The day after his 17th birthday, Yamal’s first international trophy may come in Berlin, when Spain meets England in the final of Euro 2024. Three weeks after he turned 37, what may be Messi’s final national team accolade could arrive in Miami, where Argentina takes on Colombia in the final of the Copa América.

But the threads linking both careers, the all-time GOAT-contending, eight-time Ballon d’Or-winning, universal approval-gaining Messi masterpiece, and the fledgling one being touted as maybe, just maybe, good enough to be one day mentioned in the same breath as it, come from a hallowed soccer spot.

La Masia.

Barcelona’s famed academy is where both mega talents emerged. It is, in its truest sense, it is a 300-year-old farmhouse next to the legendary Camp Nou stadium, used to house youngsters seeking to break through as Barça pros down the years.

In broader terms, it is now used to describe the academy in general, and it has taken on a mythological status, where the secret spells are passed down, where special football is played and taught. A certain way, the Barça way.

It is where Messi moved to from Rosario, Argentina, at the age of 13 and learned how to take his remarkable talent and turn it into something unstoppable. And it is where a kid from the impoverished Rocafonda section of Catalonia grabbed Barcelona’s attention at the age of six. He was taken in, ingested the club’s ways and methods, and outstripped all the other most talented youngsters by so much that they had no choice but to put him in the first team while he was still just 15.

It isn’t by chance that Messi became perhaps the best player ever to pull on a pair of cleats or that Yamal has taken these Euros by storm. La Masia is an idea as much as a location, a philosophy, where technical excellence at an extraordinary level is cultivated and then demanded.

“I have told my mom that if we win I don’t want any presents,” Yamal told Marca. What a ride. He’s not just younger than anyone to ever play or score in these championships, but now maybe about to get a winner’s medal as a birthday gift.

Messi had to wait until three years ago for his first trophy with Argentina, and it came in the Copa América, before then adding a World Cup for good measure. If he plays another Copa it will be beyond his 40th birthday.

“I want to win the Euros and for Messi to win the Copa América so that we can meet,” Yamal told reporters. The winner of each respective competition meets in the Finalissima later this year.

Whatever happens with Yamal, and history tells us there ae no sure things in soccer, the pair will always be linked, of course. There is that photo we’ve all seen by now; Messi bathing the baby Yamal as part of a UNICEF photoshoot. Then there is just the simple fact that no one since Messi has looked this good, this young.

Yet it is the way they view the game, that they seem to see it a beat ahead of everyone else, where every movement has a purpose, that truly binds them. With England having been rigid and disjointed on its left flank at times, they see right-winger Yamal as their most concerning threat going into Sunday. Messi is what Colombia is most concerned about, too, because, well, he’s Lionel Messi.

La Masia graduates pack the annals of the sport. As well as Messi, there is Xavi Hernandez and Andrés Iniesta, and the modern coaching maestro that is Pep Guardiola. And Sergio Busquets, and Carles Puyol, and Gerard Piqué, and goodness knows how many more to come.

For a while at least, you may see more come into the spotlight. Barcelona has been hit with financial sanctions that curb the amount of money it is able to lavish on new talent.

While Real Madrid is back in big-spend mode and has just landed Kylian Mbappé, Barça is increasingly likely to use its stocks of academy gold dust for a while. This generation of La Masia has already produced regular starters for Spain, including Yamal, Pedri, Gavi and, the Euro 2024’s leading scorer, Dani Olmo.

Yamal, the brightest of that bunch, is right now the shining star of the second most important soccer tournament in the world.

And the embodiment of a culture which is felt and revered around the soccer world, perhaps never more so than on Sunday.

Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports. Follow him on Twitter @MRogersFOX.

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