The almost-rabona Lamine Yamal pulled off on the Galatasaray byline was gorgeous. It doesn't make him the best player alive, and it doesn't retire Neymar. The only question it answers is whether the clip deserves another replay. It does.
In Istanbul, in the Champions League, Yamal carried the ball toward the touchline with Eren Elmalı on him, shaped his right foot behind his left leg like he was about to hit a rabona, never touched the ball with it, then dragged it away with the sole of his boot and slid a pass to Anthony Gordon, who finished. Barcelona, without Raphinha, came from a goal down to win 4-1. Yamal set up Fermín López earlier, picked up two assists on the night, and took the Player of the Match award. Hansi Flick credited him with "changing the game" and said "It's unbelievable what he's doing." Every bit of that is real and excellent.
Now the part the hype accounts leave out. Watch the alternate angle and the ball takes a kind bounce in the middle of the move. Yamal isn't pretending otherwise. "I don't know what to call it, it was an almost-rabona dribble," he said. "It came off well to set up Gordon, that's the main thing, that it was effective at the end of the day." He explained the thinking too: defenders keep throwing themselves to the ground when he reaches the byline, so he baited one into it. That's a brilliant young player reading a defender and catching a lucky bounce before finishing the play.
Gordon deserves his cut, by the way. Someone still has to be calm enough to put the chance away, and he was.
The jump from "great assist" to "best player in the world, past Neymar" is manufactured, and the person least interested in making it is Yamal. At the World Cup this past June he called Messi "the best player in history" and named Neymar as his idol, someone he grew up watching and loving. When the kid himself puts two other players above his own head, fans crowning him off one feint are doing him no favors. What actually settles these arguments is years of production, and nobody's put in those years yet.
The discourse keeps cheating to get there, too. A comment Mario Lemina made back in August 2025, when he claimed he didn't know who Yamal was and only knew Sané, has been dug up and passed around as if it were trash talk from this week, so the magic could be sold as revenge. It's an old quote recycled to make a highlight feel like a verdict.
Istanbul tells you this: as of that result, Yamal had four assists in his first two Champions League outings of the season, and Barcelona had won ten in a row to open the campaign, eight in LaLiga and two in Europe. That's a special teenager in sensational early-season form, carrying a side missing its other main threat. That's the real story, no invented rivalry required.
Yamal is a special player still being built. One feint against a Turkish left-back, with a friendly bounce he freely admits to, is proof of that and nothing more. Anyone telling you it proves he's already surpassed Neymar is selling hype.
