Lamine Yamal’s words are like his goals. The strikes open up unseen angles, unthought spaces, and unforeseen dimensions. The words slit open old wounds. With one sentence after the Belgium victory, “If anyone should be afraid it should be them, we knocked them out of the Euros,” he slashed open a night France wanted to forget. Everything: the score, the scar, the star, the goal, the flaw.
It was the night that built the legend of Yamal. The goal that advertised his infinite potential and announced the postcode of his town Rocafonda to the world. He has yet to set the World Cup stage on fire, but the memory clings on. Thirty yards from goal, he careened inside and ferried the ball to the top corner off the far post, leaving the audience, teammates and the French in equal parts shocked and marvelling.
The pattern could recur with semifinal-defining consequences. Yamal’s recovery from injury has been so staggered that he has not hit the high notes of the Euros, but France’s left side remains his hunting ground, their sinister vulnerability, their historical undoing.
Lucas Digne, who replaced Theo Hernandez at left-back, is susceptible to lapses, prone to abandoning his post for attacking pastures, and slow to retreat when play turns quickly. The midfielder behind him would have nightmares recalling the goal’s buildup, when Yamal left his marker grasping vapour with a nudge of the outside of his boot. France simply wilted thereafter.