Barcelona have finally confirmed that Lamine Yamal will take up the club’s iconic No 10 shirt — another landmark moment in his brilliant, burgeoning career.
Yamal, who turned 18 on Sunday, inherits the number from his good friend Ansu Fati, who had it for the last three years but left it behind on July 1 when joining Monaco on loan. There’s no prize for knowing who had it before Fati: Lionel Messi.
It is a symbolic moment sure to be greeted with excitement by Barca fans, and the process has been carefully managed. The decision has been a mutual one between Yamal and Barcelona, with both parties feeling this was the right moment.
From Yamal’s side, it’s fair to say he’s felt like the household name at Barca for a while now. However, he requested not to be handed the No 10 with Fati still at the club. The two have been close since Yamal’s days at La Masia, and as long as Fati, 22, represented Barca, he did not want to take his number.
Then came another request from the Yamal camp for Barca to wait until his 18th birthday before revealing his new number officially. Barca’s original plan was to announce it when launching the sale of their new kit for 2025-26. Instead, Yamal’s new shirt was only available to pre-order when that happened, with delivery to follow once the “mystery” of his number for the season was made known.
Barca will expect a considerable boost in kit sales to follow. They have their best player linked to their most iconic shirt number, just after signing a new long-term contract. Having secured arguably the game’s most exciting talent for the foreseeable future, they want to celebrate it and reap the rewards.
Despite all the waiting, this has felt inevitable for some time. After Yamal’s breakout performances at the European Championship with winners Spain last summer, when he was named young player of the tournament, his dizzying progress has shown no signs of slowing.
He won La Liga and the Copa del Rey this season, he shone on the biggest stage in the Champions League semi-finals against Inter, he signed a new contract to become one of Barca’s highest earners and he has become a Ballon d’Or contender.
Now he is taking the shirt that Messi wore. There’s a weight that comes with that. It means inevitable comparisons with the player who scored 709 goals in 837 games for Barca. It is a blessing and a curse.
Yamal and Fati, pictured in April (David Ramos/Getty Images)
“I don’t want to compare myself with anyone and even less with Messi,” said Yamal at a pre-match press conference back in April, when he also revealed he was yet to meet the Argentinian in person since his Barca breakout.
“I try to follow my own path,” he added. “Obviously, I look up to him as the best footballer ever, but I don’t make the comparison.”
The pressure at Barcelona is, and always will be, off the charts, no matter what state the club are in and regardless of the number on your back. Messi is, by a distance, the most iconic bearer of Barcelona’s No 10, but even for him there was weight to take on.
Just before Messi there was Ronaldinho. The Brazilian followed illustrious countrymen Rivaldo and Romario. Before them, Diego Maradona wore it. We are talking about a sort of football royalty here, but most importantly in Barcelona’s case, these are players with an important thing in common. They all lifted the mood at every level of the club.
Ronaldinho and Messi pictured in February 2008 (Lluis Gene/AFP via Getty Images)
Since Messi’s traumatic departure in 2021, nobody has raised the spirits at Barca like Yamal.
That doesn’t mean there’s no concern around the situation. Those who believe Yamal should remain protected from further demands — be they emotional, mental or physical — only have to point to what happened with Fati, even if there are key differences.
When Fati was handed the No 10 shirt in 2021, he had played just 31 league games across two seasons after coming through La Masia. He was only 18 but a series of impressive performances showed the potential of a world-class talent. Four years, four surgeries and multiple injuries later, he has left Barca on his second loan spell in three seasons. He departed, hoping to feel like an elite player again.
Purely in footballing terms, Yamal has achieved levels beyond what Fati managed in his early days with the first team. Since his debut two years ago, he’s already played 106 matches. With Barca, he’s won three major titles — and he’s an established star with Spain.
Yamal is a leading figure for Barca and for Spain (Mikolaj Barbanell/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
When Messi left Barcelona, there was a huge gap to fill. You could easily make the case that Fati was taking that shirt on at the worst possible time. The circumstances are different for Yamal. Parallels will still be drawn, but at a certain distance.
The comparisons with Messi are on the whole not helpful but also standing in Yamal’s favour is this: the handling of his rise bears several similarities to how Barcelona managed Messi’s breakthrough back in the day. It is quite different to the Fati case.
Messi made his first-team debut aged 17 in October 2004, but it wasn’t until the year after that he spent his first full season with Frank Rijkaard’s squad. He spent two further campaigns with the first team wearing Nos 30 and 19, while growing under the wing of Ronaldinho. When, in summer 2008, Pep Guardiola landed as manager and Ronaldinho left to join Milan, Messi was given the No 10. Aged 21, he had made 110 appearances.
Yamal has featured in four fewer games for Barca — but his playing time in those matches amounts to about 200 more minutes. The difference in age is what makes his case so frighteningly impressive. He was 15 years and 290 days old when he made his debut in April 2023 — becoming the club’s youngest player in La Liga history. Once the new season starts, he will be taking on Messi’s mantle aged 18.
Individually, he’s achieved and shown arguably more than what Barca had seen of Messi in 2008. Wearing the No 10 had to happen sooner than later and he has already shown he can thrive under the pressure.
Now begins another new chapter in the long-term mission the teenager has set for himself.
“I want Barca to win and to be among the best in business,” Yamal said at that press conference back in April.
“You can see that feeling in our team, it’s a dream for us and it has a lot to do with our performance this season. We remember when the club won the Champions League in 2015 and we don’t only play because that’s our job — we also feel the colours of this football club.
“Fear while playing the game? I left all my fears in the park of my neighbourhood, back in Mataro, a while ago.”
(Top image: Joan Gosa/Xinhua via Getty Images)
