The jewels of FC Barcelona continue to shine and break through even in times of financial despair. Perhaps without La Masia and the subsidiary, even the club would no longer exist as it does today. For both sporting and economic reasons, Barcelona remains forever grateful and reliant on their own youth talents.
When other clubs and teams focused on building dynasties around their star players, Barça chose to play the long game as they relied on their youth to develop and then return the favor in the future rather than in the present. While this has undoubtedly led to some difficult years in Barça’s history, it has undeniably produced results as well.
Lamine Yamal, the crown jewel and poster boy of this new generation of FC Barcelona, remains the player who acts as the prime example of these results. Despite being only 17 years of age, the youngster is one of football’s premiere figureheads already and has even become the youngest ever nominee for the Ballon d’Or this year.
However, nominations are not all that he is collecting right now. As pointed out by SPORT, the young Barcelona prodigy becomes the recipient of the La Liga Under-23 Player of the month for August 2024, an award he won last year for the exact same month as well. Following his surreal start to the campaign, it hardly comes as a surprise.
The young 17-year-old Barcelona winger was crucial in each and every single victory that the club has enjoyed so far this campaign. With four wins out of four games, the collective result was already working in Yamal’s favor but the addition of his individual brilliance really tipped the odds and made him the clear favorite from the very start.
With one brilliant goal against Athletic Club and four assists to his name in the opening four games, Yamal is tied at the top of the La Liga charts for most goal contributions so far in the league and also leads the charts independently with the most assists provided. An immense tally for even the most seasoned of veterans, and hardly even fair for his Under-23 competitors to keep up with.
Interestingly, he is joined by his coach Hansi Flick in being the two most outstanding individuals in
their respective categories and fields. The Barcelona manager ended up winning the Coach of the Month award as well for August with his team having a flawless record so far and having scored 13 goals on top of that as well.
