FC Barcelona prodigy Lamine Yamal has been tipped to surpass Pele by German Burgos.
By German ‘El Mono’ Burgos, FC Barcelona prodigy Lamine Yamal has been tipped to surpass Pele if he becomes a European champion with Spain this weekend.
Lamine has been one of the breakout stars of the Euros through a vital assist that helped knock hosts Germany out of the quarterfinals and a wonderstrike that did much to send France home from the last four.
England now stand in La Roja’s way, and Burgos noted the records that Lamine is breaking amid becoming the youngest ever goalscorer at the competition, in La Liga, and for the Spain national team to mention just a few milestones the 17-year-old has overturned.
“At that age he is already breaking all records. If he is champion I think he will surpass Pele and many more,” Burgos claimed.
“Comparing him with [Lionel] Messi is still too early because he has to continue to sustain his brilliant career that he is having from the beginning, that ability and those things he has must be sustained over time as [Cristiano] Ronaldo has also done and other great players.”
Burgos said that while he doesn’t know if Lamine “is going to be Messi”, Barca “has a diamond” on its hands.
“There is Pedri, Cubarsi… a lot of players that [Barca] is taking out again. They are trying to bring together veterans who can carry out certain situations and mix them with a series of new boys from the academy who have come from being champions as well,” Burgos noted.
The ex-Atletico Madrid man was of course embroiled in a controversy earlier this year when making a “traffic lights” crack about Lamine upon seeing him doing kick ups in preparation for a Champions League clash last season.
Discussing the furore, Burgos recalled how, “I called president [Joan] Laporta, [and] I called [Jorge] Mendes, who is his agent, to tell him that I would never mess with him”.
“I’m an advocate for those things and sometimes they pull, pull, pull… and a soldier of his own falls. In this case, I at Movistar had defended this situation: that they must locate these people and throw them out,” he protested, in relation to others deemed to have racially abused people in football.
“I immediately called them and they told me that the player was calm, that they had understood and nothing else was going to happen,” Burgos concluded.
