‘Champions do not rest’ - Hansi Flick sends message to Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal

The playing time of Barcelona teenage superstar Lamine Yamal has become the subject of much discussion after the comments made by Spain national team coach Luis de la Fuente, who didn’t want to even entertain the question of resting the young forward during the September international window.

Yamal did end up sitting out the second half of Spain’s last game against Switzerland, but still played 135 minutes across two games of what really is a meaningless Nations League campaign for the reigning European champions.

So it turns out the only hope for some rest for Yamal comes at the club level, but Hansi Flick doesn’t think Lamine should be taking much time off. When asked about the issue during a press conference on Saturday the German echoed the thoughts of Girona manager Míchel about Yamal’s quality, and made it clear he thinks Lamine will need to learn to play a lot of minutes if he wants to be one of the best players around.

“Michel is right when he talks about Lamine: he is a very decisive player. Lamine is at a high level, but at his age he can still improve and he must improve. It is fantastic to see him every day, but he must continue to progress. Champions do not rest. If he aspires to be a great champion he will not be able to rest much. He has to keep going and going.”

That’s a somewhat concerning stance from Flick, who wasn’t a big fan of resting players at Bayern Munich and is a firm believer in having very physically fit footballers who can play big games every three days. But Yamal is still very young, and his body is not ready for the massive load it’s already going through.

We’ll see if Hansi will eventually soften his position on taking care of his most prized possession, or if Yamal will be playing 90 minutes every three days for the rest of the season. That’s a bit of a scary prospect to consider.