Lamine Yamal’s first 120 Barcelona games put the Messi comparisons in perspective

There’s a stat line doing the rounds that puts Lamine Yamal right next to Lionel Messi after 120 Barcelona appearances. Across those games, Yamal has 32 goals and 43 assists, 75 direct goal contributions. Messi at the same mark had 50 goals and 26 assists, 76 goal contributions.

On paper the numbers are almost identical. In real life they sit on top of very different careers, played in different eras, under very different pressure.

When Yamal reached 100 matches for Barcelona last spring, he was only 17 years and 271 days old, already ahead of where most La Masia prospects ever get. By the time he hit 120, he’d just turned 18. Messi did not reach 120 Barcelona games until he was 21 in October 2008.

Zoom out to club and country and the gap in workload looks even starker. Before his 18th birthday, Yamal had already racked up around 130 appearances for Barcelona and Spain, almost twice as many as the next busiest player in that age group. Supporters who are excited by the numbers are also the ones quietly asking how long a teenager can carry that kind of schedule.

Inside the club there’s at least an acknowledgement that this pace can’t be taken for granted. Barcelona president Joan Laporta has called Yamal “a genius and a fantastic kid” and added that “we must look after him and protect him,” language that sounds more like a duty of care than a marketing campaign. Messi’s early years were managed inside a more veteran squad, with Ronaldinho, Samuel Eto’o and Deco taking much of the exposure while he grew into his body and his role.

All of that makes the 120-game comparison less a clean race and more a snapshot of how modern football treats its brightest teenagers.

Different roles, similar impact

The split inside the numbers matters as much as the totals.

At 120 games, Messi’s 50 goals leave Yamal’s 32 far behind. He was already trending toward the ruthless scorer who would finish his Barcelona career with 672 goals and 35 trophies. Yamal’s contribution leans in the other direction: 43 assists to Messi’s 26 at the same stage, and only a small gap in overall goal involvements.

Recent league seasons support what the numbers suggest. Even while battling pubalgia, Yamal has stacked up goals and, especially, assists at a rate that keeps him near the top of Barcelona’s attacking charts. He spends most of his time wide on the right, dropping into the half-space, drawing pressure and threading passes into runners rather than constantly attacking the box himself.

He has talked about that choice before. In a recent interview he said, “As a kid, I used to study Messi’s passes. Other players made good passes, but Messi’s passes were pretty much goals. I always thought passing was more interesting than dribbling.” That mindset explains why, at 18, he already looks more like a wide playmaker than a pure scorer, even as his finishing continues to improve.

So the 120-game comparison doesn’t show a clone of Messi. It shows two different types of dominance at similar checkpoints: one built on goals, the other on creation. In practical terms, that is a good problem for Barcelona to have.

The context around Yamal’s role is just as important. He has already helped deliver a domestic treble, then been handed the number 10 shirt previously worn by Messi, Ronaldinho and Maradona. The club has tied him to a contract through 2031 that includes a release clause in the region of €1 billion, roughly $1.1 billion at current rates, a figure that is part deterrent and part statement about where they see their future. When Barcelona crowns Yamal with Messi’s No. 10 at just 18, it turns a promising teenager into the face of a project.

His life as a symbol arrived just as fast as his games. His style and personality already spill beyond the pitch, from the way his new blonde hair invited Neymar comparisons to the way Lamine Yamal’s LeBron tribute sparks a culture clash in football about humility and ambition. For older supporters, that mix of flair and scrutiny is new territory compared to the slower build of Messi’s fame.

Through all of it, Yamal has been clear about how he sees the comparison. “I think that I respect him, in the end, for what he’s been, for what he is to soccer, and if we ever meet one day on a soccer field, there’ll be that mutual respect. He’s the best in history,” he told CBS. “We both know I don’t want to be Messi, and Messi knows I don’t want to be him. I want to follow my own path, and that’s it.”

That line has resonated because it captures what a lot of people feel but rarely articulate. Calling every La Masia prodigy “the next Messi” hasn’t helped anyone. It weighed on Bojan. It followed Ansu Fati through injuries. It even drags the conversation around Yamal into a premature verdict that some fans have already tried to deliver: either “he’s not at Messi’s level” or “he’s better, let that sink in,” with no room in between.

The better use of the 120-game comparison is simply to recognize how unusual it is to have a teenager whose output and influence can even be measured against Messi that early. Over a full Barcelona career, nobody is likely to get close to 672 goals, 35 trophies and the catalogue of decisive nights that define Messi in any serious ranking. For anyone who wants the long view on that, Barcelona’s top 10 goal scorers of all time remains a reminder of just how far ahead he sits.

What Yamal can reasonably chase is something different: a career where his own numbers, style and moments are allowed to stand on their own. If he stays healthy, protected and trusted in the right way, his first 120 games suggest that Barcelona have found not the next Messi, but a new kind of problem for defenders on the right side of the pitch, and a new kind of standard for what an 18-year-old can do.