How Joao Cancelo could unlock Lamine Yamal in Barcelona’s second half of the season | OneFootball

The first half of the 2025/26 season has produced a recurring image in every FC Barcelona fan’s mind: Lamine Yamal receiving the ball wide on the right touchline, with two, sometimes three, opposition shirts swarming onto him from all directions and closing the space around him.

Rivals have started to believe the danger on the right flank lies there, and only there, for Hansi Flick’s team.

The fact that the teenager has still produced nine goals and eleven assists in 23 games across all competitions is a testament to the quality he possesses, but the burden on his shoulders is visible. And still, Barcelona keep asking Lamine to solve the same problem, again and again.

If an 18-year-old playing through discomfort is your cleanest right-sided solution, opponents do not need a genius plan. They just need bodies. They send a second man early, a third man late, and they bet that Barcelona will not punish the space that opens up behind the crowd.

This is the context in which Joao Cancelo re-enters Barcelona’s story. Not as a luxury, not even as an upgrade, but as a structural solution in certain games.

This is not about replacing Jules Kounde. With the Portuguese full-back, the right side stops being a solo act. It becomes a duet.

The limitations of Jules Kounde

Under Hansi Flick, Barcelona have leaned into control. High possession shares, aggressive territorial dominance, and a tendency to keep opponents pinned deep come with their own share of problems.

The predictability on the right flank has been brutal. Kounde, repurposed as a right-back, gives Barcelona defensive assurance and stability, and is the perfect counter-argument to Alejandro Balde on the left flank.

He wins duels, stops transitions and is rarely beaten for pace. However, this comes with a cost on the ball.

The Frenchman’s overlaps are measured, and opponents have understood this. They allow Kounde time on the ball, trusting that it will not translate into incision. The gamble works, more often than not.

His only other replacement, Eric Garcia, is also a repurposed centre-back who is more adventurous than Kounde but does not offer a significantly different tactical route for Hansi Flick.

Enter Joao Cancelo

Cancelo could be the key to unlock Lamine Yamal. (Photo by Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images)

Joao Cancelo’s return changes that immediately, not because he runs more but because he offers more ways of exploiting the same space.

At his best, the 31-year-old is three players rolled into one: a touchline-hugging overlapper, an interior midfielder arriving between the lines and a deep-lying playmaker who can add another body to the midfield.

Double or triple-teaming a winger works only when the next pass is predictable. Cancelo destroys all notions of this predictability.

Most importantly, the Portuguese international is much more comfortable than Kounde in receiving under pressure, and his dribbling also helps him escape tricky scenarios.

This is an option that Hansi Flick does not necessarily need to use in big games, but most La Liga teams tend to sit in a deep block against Barcelona, and this is where Cancelo can prove to be a potent attacking weapon.

Let us dive into these potential tactical scenarios in detail.

Pattern A: The overlap that buys Lamine Yamal time

The value here is not the overlap itself but what it forces. The left-back must turn his hips and change direction to track Cancelo’s run. This half-second of hesitation is all that Lamine needs.

Suddenly, the dribble is not about beating the two men focused on him. It is about getting past the one who is already compromised.

Even if Cancelo never receives the ball during this overlap, his run pins the defensive line and takes a man off Lamine.

This allows the Spaniard to then analyse potential options to progress the play, either through a pass, a dribble or a shot himself.

Pattern B: The underlap that punishes the third man

Most teams now defend Lamine with a third body, usually a screening midfielder stepping across once the winger receives the ball. This is where Cancelo’s underlapping instinct comes in handy.

Picture this: Yamal is wide on the right touchline and attracts the winger and the full-back. The midfielder steps across to complete the cage. Cancelo now has the opportunity to dart into the space vacated by the midfielder.

Now the opposition defence is stretched vertically. If the centre-back steps out, it breaks the defensive line and allows one of Raphinha or Dani Olmo to occupy the vacated space.

If he holds, Cancelo can receive the ball in space between the lines with his body already angled towards goal.

This pattern is devastating because it destroys the opposition’s logic to double or triple-team. The very tactical plan designed to curtail Lamine becomes the key to opening the lane behind it.

Pattern C: Inversion, circulation and the low block

Not every solution is explosive. Some are simply functional. When Cancelo inverts into a double pivot, Barcelona gain an extra body in midfield.

This allows the team to speed up ball circulation through triangles, improves the counter-press and also allows Frenkie de Jong to move further forward, which is something he loves to do.

This, in turn, allows Olmo to move into the right half-space and support Lamine. In this scenario, additional control becomes a weapon.

Two trivela merchants, one corridor

There is also something less subtle at play here, something less diagrammable but important nonetheless. Cancelo and Lamine Yamal share a common language. Both have mastered the art of the trivela pass.

Lamine tends to attempt more outside-the-boot passes than most but lacks a bit of precision, whereas Cancelo is more selective in when he unleashes the weapon, often with devastating effect.

With players like Raphinha, Ferran Torres and Fermin Lopez, who love to make runs into the box, the trivela becomes a potent weapon and can now come from two different sources on the right flank instead of one.

Both players are capable of going inside and outside with their passing angles, and this adds yet another headache for the opposition to contend with.

The risk that comes attached

None of this comes for free. Cancelo’s attacking tendencies come with transitional risk, especially in a team that holds a very high defensive line and is not always compact defensively.

The Portuguese full-back is not necessarily the most adept defensively either, making him a potential liability in big games.

Thus, this is a weapon that needs to be unleashed with precision. Hansi Flick will need to pick and choose the matches in which he uses Cancelo as a right-back.

Cancelo made his second debut for Barcelona vs Sociedad. (Photo by Juan Manuel Serrano Arce/Getty Images)

It also allows the German manager to use Kounde as a central defender, should he decide to go down that route.

When Cancelo plays, having someone like Kounde as a right-sided centre-back could be a viable solution, as he is familiar with defending wide spaces on the right.

Someone like Frenkie de Jong could also help defend the space with his positional intelligence.

The second-half promise

The second half of the season is usually when teams become easier to read. Patterns harden and opposition sides start exploiting this predictability.

Cancelo’s return is Barcelona’s refusal to be simplified. While it does not guarantee that Lamine will explode statistically, it provides the best possible conditions for that to happen.

What it offers, though, is something more valuable and beyond just Lamine: better touches in better spaces with fewer bodies. It adds an additional dimension to the right flank.

And when Lamine receives more space, Barcelona’s ceiling rises quietly but dangerously. How all this plays out on the pitch is an easier question to answer in June 2026 than it is now.