Lamine Yamal’s star power is such that the spotlight is permanently fixed on him, earning his role as the focal point of Barcelona’s attack and the attention of an audience, both in a stadium and in front of a screen, when he takes to the pitch. It makes complete sense, then, that Chelsea would fixate on the 18-year-old as he arrived at Stamford Bridge for a high-stakes UEFA Champions League encounter, a win thrusting either side back into the conversation for a top-eight berth in the league phase and direct passageway to the round of 16. The Blues’ focus was not misguided – the hosts successfully neutralized Yamal en route to a 3-0 win over Barcelona on Tuesday, their most impressive result of their Champions League campaign.
Barcelona can point to different anomalies that worsened the deficit – Jules Kounde’s comical first-half own goal kicked off a bad day that only got worse with Ronald Araujo’s second yellow card just before halftime. The astounding thing about Chelsea’s performance, though, is that those abnormalities merely accentuated the difference between the two sides. By the time Araujo’s 44th-minute red card had permanently given the Blues a personnel advantage on the field, the damage was already done.
Chelsea played a fairly even first half with Barcelona, only slightly behind them in terms of possession, touches and attempted passes. There was one key difference – the Blues’ high-intensity approach was built with limiting Barcelona’s high-caliber attack in mind, especially with Robert Lewandowski returning to the fold after a months-long injury spell. The visitors had just three shots by the time the halftime whistle blew, their lowest first-half shot total all season long.
Unsurprisingly, limiting Yamal was instrumental in unraveling Barcelona. The 18-year-old had just 64 touches, the fewest he has had in a single match between LaLiga and the Champions League this season, completely limiting his capacity to launch Barcelona’s attack. He had a below-average passing night with a 72.2% passing accuracy from 36 passes, far below his season average of 80.8%. Again, this was not merely a result of playing down to 10 in the second half – his 32 first-half touches were on par with his season average and the same goes for his 18 passes before the break. The Blues were not simply trying to push him off the ball; a handful of players took turns marking him in groups, closing off his passing lanes. His passing accuracy stood at 66.7% in the first half, though, making it one of his worst halves this season from that perspective.
There was another teenager who stole the spotlight instead – Chelsea’s Estevao, three months’ Yamal’s senior and in the midst of a breakout season. He nabbed the Blues’ second in the 55th minute, dribbling past Barcelona’s Alejandro Balde before making his way into the box and scoring from a tight angle, the latest in a month full of stellar finishes. The Brazil international notched his ninth goal for club and country in a month and became the second youngest player to score in each of his first three Champions League starts, behind only Kylian Mbappe.
The comparisons to some of the game’s greats do not end there. Estevao earned the praise of Thierry Henry and Jamie Carragher post-match, who whittled off names like Diego Maradona and Robert Pires in their analysis. Carragher also compared the 18-year-old to Henry in his ability to dazzle, the pair impressed by Estevao’s ability to dribble past whichever player is in front of him on the wing.
“Even if you watch football, even great teams, they’ll only have one player on the team who can really dribble,” Carragher said on the UEFA Champions League Today post-match show. “I think most players will get it and pass it and when you’ve got someone who can do it – that’s why we love Maradona … Even though we’ve all played at the top level, we know how difficult it is to dribble through players. That’s why [Henry is] revered as the greatest player to play in the Premier League, because you’ve scored goals and you’ve done things that no one else can do. People can score a great goal or could be lucky or could be quick or could defend or could play a nice pass. We can all do that. We’ve all done that on occasions but if you can’t dribble, you can’t dribble. You can’t go past players and that’s [why] I think it’s so special so see somebody have that.”
Estevao and his teammates may have had the benefit of playing against Barcelona’s perennially leaky defense but Tuesday’s goal was not a one-off. He scored a very similar strike in the Club World Cup against Chelsea, shortly before the Blues’ 2-1 win in Philadelphia would mark Estevao’s final game for his boyhood club Palmeiras.
“The first quality of the kid is to dribble. Why are you going to take that away?” Henry said. “If I don’t make you run and I pass the ball all the time, it’s an easy job for you as a right back or a left back. Let him cook. Let him play. We need to enjoy these types of players or these types of games.”
