Lamine Yamal overtakes Lionel Messi as Spain thrashes Saudi Arabia | OneFootball

With the FIFA World Cup now well underway, a lot of eyes are on the FC Barcelona players representing their various countries on the world’s biggest stage as well, especially Lamine Yamal. Taking on that kind of pressure is hardly easy, but in today’s game between Spain and Saudi Arabia in particular, he managed to create history.

In just his first start for the Spanish National team at the World Cup stage, Lamine Yamal needed only around 10 minutes to find the back of the net. Thanks to a well-timed run and a brilliant pass from Mikel Oyarzabal, the 18-year-old winger opened the scoring for Spain at the tournament.

As highlighted by Mundo Deportivo, Yamal has managed to join a special group of players that includes even the likes of Brazilian great Pele himself. Now among the youngest goal scorers in the tournament’s history, the Barcelona forward continues to shatter and match record after record.

Image via Seleccion Argentina.

To be precise, thanks to a list compiled by Sports Illustrated, Yamal is now the 8th youngest player in World Cup history to score for his country. He now sits alongside the likes of Lionel Messi, Barça teammate Gavi, Michael Owen, and Pele when it comes to this special category of elite footballers. To be precise, he has now overtaken Lionel Messi in that particular ranking, having just scored his latest goal at the exact age of 18 years and 343 days while the Argentinian legend was 18 years and 357 days old when he found the back of the net back in the 2006 edition of the tournament.

In fact, apart from the Brazilian forward, all the players in the top nine of the aforementioned ranking were aged 18 and are only separated by days and months rather than years. For Barcelona, this is great news and continues to put on display the excellence that La Masia continues to sharpen.

Speaking of La Masia, other Barcelona academy players also shined in this game. Dani Olmo provided an assist for one of Spain’s goals while Marc Cucurella, who is formerly from Barça’s academy despite now being aligned with Real Madrid, also played a crucial part in Spain’s fourth goal of the game.