Adrien Rabiot should have known better.He may now be a 29 year old veteran,but football fans’ earliest recollections of him are of a temperamental and mercurial teenager at PSG more than a decade ago.
He had to defy critiques of his attitude and application to make more than 150 appearances for each of PSG and Juventus, nearly half a century of caps for a France team enjoying successive golden generations.
He is currently linked with some of the continent’s biggest clubs after leaving Juventus at the end of his contract, with Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United all rumored to be battling for his signature.
He has had the career he has and is continuing to have because he is obviously a good player, but the contribution of the chip on his shoulder from being doubted and written off as a youngster can not be understated.
Professional sports is not just about physical and technical attributes. The mental composition matters big time too .And Rabiot knows that more than most. He in fact embodies it perfectly.
And so the Frenchman should have known that goading Spain’s newest superstar, the teenage phenom Lamine Yamal, before the two teams’ blockbuster Euro 2024 semifinal was a fool’s errand.
On the surface, Rabiot saying “Obviously it could be difficult for him to deal with a semi final in a big tournament…And to reach a final at the Euros, he needs to do more than he’s done up until now.” was a fairly toothless attempt at mind games, but try telling that to Yamal, whose breathtaking displays for Barcelona have translated seamlessly to the Spanish national team.
His Background
He has truly become a social media sensation with his play for La Roja in Germany, but his father Mounir Nasraou, more popularly known as hustle_hard_304 has weirdly run him close with football fans reposting screenshots of posts of his chronicling his son’s journey to the top of the mountain from back in the day.His mother Sheila Ebana hasn’t had the same attention but she played a major role in his upbringing even though her and Nasraou split when Yamal was just 3.
Born in Morocco and immigrating to Spain, the youthful father understably just can’t stop expressing his pride in his son. But he reached a new level with his comment about a 2007 photograph that recently went viral, of Yamal as a baby in a basin, being bathed by none other than Lionel Messi.
Yamal’s skill, speed, trickery and creativity has drawn obvious early comparisons to the great Argentine, and the narrative of the photo gave it the aura of a baptism.
Mister hustle_hard_304 then threw a spanner in the works earlier this week, telling Mundo Deportivo, “Blessing from Leo to Lamine? Or from Lamine to Leo. For me,my son is the best!”. Of course it was said tongue in cheek, but that last part is the most important, demonstrating the total belief and support that Nasraou has in Yamal.
Talk is cheap and actions speak louder than words and Yamal’s parents deserve credit for being able to recognize their child’s precocious ability, and then supporting it by letting him develop it in the prestigious La Masia academy. The result of their work is a teenage superstar whose performances at Euro 2024 have drawn comparisons to Pele announcing himself at the 1958 World Cup.
Yamal’s emergence has thus drawn comparisons to Project Mbappe, the painstaking process through which the France superstar was supposedly built deliberately into a superstar who also announced himself as a teenager at Monaco back in 2016.How poetic that Yamal’s beauty put Spain on their way to knocking France(and Mbappe)out of the tournament.
Yamal then fired back at the unfortunate Rabiot,his tone almost endearing,soaked in teenage anger ,an Instagram post of a picture with the words, “Move in silence. Only speak when it is time to say checkmate”.
It felt almost scripted that it was Rabiot, of all people, who had the best seat in the house for a truly wondrous goal that will be remembered for years to come, as his attempt to close down Spain’s Number 19 proved inadequate, and he could only watch on in total helplesness.
Great work, fam. Keep it up