Euro 20214 tournament soccer offers a chance for young players to break through. They’re not normally this young. Lamine Yamal has been the star of Euro 2024, especially after his stunning goal against France in the semifinals, which made him the youngest-ever scorer at a men’s European Championship. He turned 17 on Saturday, a day before the final against England in Berlin. German 21-year-olds Jamal Musiala and Florian Wirtz lit up the tournament for the host nation, and another 21-year-old, Xavi Simons, scored a spectacular goal as the Netherlands lost to England in the semifinals. There was disappointment for Spain midfielder Pedri, also 21, whose tournament was ended by a rough challenge from Germany’s Toni Kroos in the quarterfinals.
Quick Read
- Euro 2024 Takeaways:
- Young Stars Shine: Lamine Yamal, at 17, became the youngest-ever scorer at a men’s European Championship with his stunning goal against France in the semifinals. German 21-year-olds Jamal Musiala and Florian Wirtz, and Netherlands’ Xavi Simons also impressed.
- Struggles for Big Names: Cristiano Ronaldo finished without any goals, Kylian Mbappé managed only a penalty, and Harry Kane, despite reaching the final, seemed off pace. Kevin de Bruyne couldn’t inspire Belgium.
- Fan Festivities: Fans celebrated vibrantly across Germany with colorful marches. The Dutch had a 100,000-strong march to their semifinal. Minor clashes occurred, but overall, the atmosphere was positive.
- VAR Controversies: VAR decisions sparked heated debates, particularly involving Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands. Criticisms focused on the inconsistency and impact of these decisions on key matches.
- No Small Teams: Even the smaller nations showed resilience, with no team losing all its games. Georgia, Albania, and Slovenia had notable performances, highlighting the competitive nature of the tournament.
- Spain phenom Lamine Yamal has electrified Euro 2024, surprising no one in his hometown of Mataro.
- Yamal, who grew up playing in the Rocafonda neighborhood, has become a global soccer star, drawing the support and admiration of his local community.
- Known for playing pickup games on a small concrete slab, his neighbors now gather to watch him on TV as he leads Spain in the European Championship final against England.
- At 17, Yamal has already set records as the youngest player and scorer for Barcelona’s senior team and for Spain.
- His father, Mounir Nasraoui, proud of his son’s achievements, believes that Yamal’s destiny is unfolding as expected.
- Yamal’s goal celebration, a hand sign representing the last three digits of Rocafonda’s postal code (304), resonates with his local supporters.
- Yamal, son of a Moroccan father and a mother from Equatorial Guinea, reflects Spain’s multicultural identity and rising young talent.
- His journey to stardom began at Barcelona’s La Masia training academy, following in the footsteps of his idol, Lionel Messi.
- An early encounter with Messi, captured in a 2007 charity calendar photo, has been seen as a fateful anointing of Yamal as Messi’s heir apparent.
- Former coaches and community members recall Yamal’s exceptional talent and dedication from a young age, leading to his meteoric rise in soccer.
- Yamal’s standout performance in Euro 2024, including a memorable goal against France, has solidified his status as one of the tournament’s top players.
The Associated Press has the story:
Euro 2024 takeaways: Lamine Yamal shines, fans party but big names struggle
Newslooks- DUESSELDORF, Germany (AP) —
Young stars emerge and big names underperform. Fans party on the streets of Germany and grumble about controversial VAR decisions. Ahead of Sunday’s final between Spain and England, here’s a look at what we’ve learned from Euro 2024 so far:
Young talents
Tournament soccer offers a chance for young players to break through. They’re not normally this young. Lamine Yamal has been the star of Euro 2024, especially after his stunning goal against France in the semifinals, which made him the youngest-ever scorer at a men’s European Championship. He turned 17 on Saturday, a day before the final against England in Berlin.
German 21-year-olds Jamal Musiala and Florian Wirtz lit up the tournament for the host nation, and another 21-year-old, Xavi Simons, scored a spectacular goal as the Netherlands lost to England in the semifinals. There was disappointment for Spain midfielder Pedri, also 21, whose tournament was ended by a rough challenge from Germany’s Toni Kroos in the quarterfinals.
Misfiring superstars
This hasn’t been a tournament for Europe’s biggest names to shine.
Cristiano Ronaldo could have become the European Championship’s oldest ever scorer at 39, but finished without any goals from five games amid enduring questions about whether Portugal would be a better team without him on the field. His biggest impact was arguably on tournament security as a string of selfie-seeking fans tried to reach him on the field.
Kylian Mbappé’s tournament started with a broken nose against Austria and ended with France’s semifinal loss to Spain. His only goal was a penalty against already-eliminated Poland. Mbappé’s interventions in French politics were arguably more significant than his deeds on the field. Harry Kane is in the final but has often seemed off the pace despite scoring three goals, and Kevin de Bruyne couldn’t inspire an often-toothless Belgian team.
Fan buzz
After a European Championship held under pandemic restrictions and a World Cup in Qatar, Euro 2024 was a chance for European fans to mass in numbers not seen for years. Colorful fan marches to stadiums — the Dutch march to their semifinal with England was 100,000 strong — lit up the host cities.
It was generally good-natured, with only a few minor clashes involving English, Dutch and Serbian fans, not the large-scale violence of Euro 2016 in France. Fans endured an overloaded German train network to get between games, though. Even the Dutch team hit train trouble that forced it to arrange a last-minute charter flight to its semifinal game.
VAR controversy
It wouldn’t be a big soccer event without heated arguments over the video review system. VAR has strayed far from the original concept unveiled by FIFA in 2016, and a few crucial calls overshadowed key games. Denmark’s Joachim Andersen had his goal ruled out for offside by VAR against Germany before VAR helped award a penalty against him shortly after.
Referees and VAR often seemed to take a lenient approach to grappling in the penalty area, but when Dutch defender Denzel Dumfries collided with England’s Harry Kane while trying to block a shot, it was a penalty that changed the course of that semifinal game. “I think that we cannot play properly football and this is due to VAR. It really breaks football,” Netherlands coach Ronald Koeman said. There was no penalty for Germany in the quarterfinals when the ball struck Spain defender Marc Cucurella’s hand. German fans jeered Cucurella in Spain’s semifinal game with France as a result.
No small teams
There were no easy opponents at Euro 2024. Even with several smaller soccer nations playing, no team lost all its games, the first time that happened at a men’s European Championship since it was an eight-team event in 1992. Georgia beat Portugal and briefly led Spain in the round of 16 in a fearless debut campaign. Albania had the lead in two of its three games and scored a quick record-breaking goal. Slovenia didn’t lose a game in regular play and was only eliminated by Portugal in a penalty shootout.
Spain phenom Lamine Yamal has electrified Euro 2024. In hometown, family and friends not surprised
MATARO, Spain (AP) — In the working-class neighborhood where Spain’s teenage phenom Lamine Yamal grew up, there are two soccer fields divided by a chain-link fence.
Next to the green carpet of the local soccer club, local lore has it that Yamal played with his friends on a small concrete slab where boys and girls now come daily to have a kickaround. Balls fly through the net-less goal frame and smack into a wall bearing the neighborhood’s name in big graffiti-style letters: Rocafonda.
But Yamal’s days of playing pickup games vanished as he blossomed into global soccer’s newest rising star. Now instead of watching him from a bench, his neighbors will gather around televisions, smart phones, or a large screen installed in a park come Sunday to root for Yamal to lead Spain to victory over England in the final of the European Championship.
“He can no longer just take a walk down the street,” said Juan Carlos Serrano, the owner of small bar where Yamal’s father would bring him for breakfast before taking the 90-minute train ride south to practice with Barcelona, the club he joined at age 7. “The people are just all over him, and he is just 16 years old. He is just a kid,” Serrano said. “People are just now discovering him, but we knew long before that he was going to stand out.”
The fervor caused by Yamal has also swept up his father, Mounir Nasraoui, who made a visit to see Serrano before going to Germany to celebrate his son’s 17th birthday on Saturday. “I am proud and happy,” Nasraoui told The Associated Press while sitting at a table under the framed shirt of Yamal’s debut with Barcelona’s reserve team, making him the youngest player to do so at age 15.
Yamal quickly topped that with precocious debuts and scoring milestones for Barcelona’s senior team and for Spain. “I always thought he would get this far, but I kept that to myself,” Nasraoui said. “Every father thinks that his son will be the best. Whether that will prove true, that depends on the destiny of each one of us.” As for Sunday’s final, his dad said: “We will win for sure.”
Three-zero-four
Yamal holds up three fingers and makes a circle with his index finger and thumb, while extending four fingers on the other hand. Arms crossed over this chest, he flashes a smile — glimpse of braces included — to put the finishing touch on his particular goal celebration. While undecipherable to millions of spectators, the peculiar hand sign Yamal made after scoring his first goals for club and country represented the last three digits of the postal code of Rocafonda: 304.
Rocafonda is home to 10,000 of the 130,000 people who live in Mataro, a coastal town north of Barcelona. From the streets of the hilly area a blue strip of the Mediterranean Sea can be seen in the distance. The diversity of Rocafonda, and a patchwork of similar neighborhoods in cities across Spain, is reflected on the streets. Immigrants run several of the local shops. Kids from all backgrounds play soccer while men in Muslim gowns trickle past on their way to a nearby mosque.
Son of a Moroccan father and a mother from Equatorial Guinea, Spain’s former colony in sub-Saharan Africa, Yamal helps represent a new, multicultural Spain, a country undergoing a demographic shift where people immigrate while Spain’s birth rate plummets. “The (304 hand sign) has become popular across all the city, not just the Rocafonda neighborhood,” said Rocafonda alderman José Antonio Ricis. “People from different postal codes are equally thrilled that he remembers the city, his neighborhood, his people.”
Anointed by Messi
After being spotted by a scout, Yamal entered Barcelona’s famed La Masia training academy, where he would follow in the footstep of his idol, Lionel Messi. The two players had already been linked by fate — or the soccer gods? — thanks to a photo shoot for a charity calendar that featured a long-haired Messi bathing a baby Yamal in a tiny plastic tub. The 2007 photo recently resurfaced after Yamal’s father posted it online, causing a huge stir in both professional and social media with many fans seeing the chance encounter as a sort of anointing by Messi of his heir apparent. “These are coincidences that happen in life, and later, it turns out this boy is good at soccer,” Nasraoui called that twist of fate. “It is blessing from God.”
Yamal went to live at Barcelona youth players’ residence at age 13 while he quickly moved up through its underage sides despite facing opponents sometimes three years older. And those slick, gliding moves, those dribbling details, precise crosses, that Yamal has used to dazzle rivals in Germany were already there.
Whose tears?
Yamal’s meteoric rise has actually been going on since he was old enough to kick a ball. He spent his earliest years between Mataro and another town less than a half-an-hour away, where his mother went to live when he was a toddler.
Inocente Díez helps run the soccer program at Yamal’s first club, La Torreta FC, near where his mother resided. She would bring him to practice, and when she couldn’t, his father would. Or Díez said he would also pick him up sometimes because the child never wanted to miss practice.
Now the summer camp run by La Torreta bears the name of “Campus Lamine Yamal.” Yamal’s picture is on the poster for the camp, and one family stopped to take a photo of the field with Yamal’s Spain shirt.
Díez said that in his 50 years in soccer he has never seen a talent like Yamal. The youngster played with kids two or three years older and was the leader of a team that won their league title. “Lots of kids can at one given moment score a great goal or do something special, but he did it in every single game,” Díez said. “He was a very quiet kid, very respectful, formal, and committed to playing with the ball. “At that age it is normal for the kids to sometimes want to leave the field, then want to see their mom, they can sometimes cry. Not him. He only wanted to play and play.”
Yamal was already one of the outstanding players of the Euro 2024 before he upstaged Kylian Mbappé — his soon-to-rival at Real Madrid next season — by scoring an exquisite curling strike from outside the area to help rally Spain past France 2-1 in the semifinals. “Ahh. I teared up,” Díez said about the goal that became an instant classic. “It was very emotional. Because he is from here.”
