Messi's old physio has a warning for Flick: never ask Lamine Yamal if he wants off
The man who looked after Lionel Messi's body at Barcelona has a simple rule for Lamine Yamal: never ask him. "It is the coaches' mistake, asking whether to change a player, because a player will never want to come off," Juanjo Brau told Cadena SER's El Larguero on Thursday night, after Hansi Flick admitted Lamine did not want to be substituted.
- Brau, Barcelona's former physiotherapist and Messi's trusted physio, says substitutions must be agreed in advance: "Hay que hablarlo antes" (Cadena SER).
- Lamine has played 1,132 minutes in 14 games for Barcelona and Spain this season, 851 of them for his club in ten matches, OKDiario counts.
- Barcelona play Betis on Saturday, PSG away on Tuesday and Real Madrid at home on 25 October.
Brau was speaking as an outsider with inside knowledge. He spent years with Barcelona's first team and was the physio Messi trusted most, and SER asked him about the debate over Lamine's rest. "El problema no es ahora en octubre, sino en las diez últimas semanas donde uno se juega todo," he said: the problem is not October but the last ten weeks of the season, when everything is decided. "Estos jugadores deben estar preparados para el mes de marzo," and rotation, in his words, exists for exactly that.
He also explained why players like Lamine are hard to manage. They "train by playing", he said, so a match day has already cost them three days of work, and asked whether this is self-management, he answered: "Es autogestión, claro." He told a story about Messi before a PSG tie, when he advised him to make only the runs that mattered because he arrived carrying knocks. Football, Brau said, cannot be measured in kilometres: the damage is done by the sprints.
The numbers explain why the question is being asked. Flick kept Lamine on for the full 90 minutes of the 4-1 win over Galatasaray in Istanbul on Tuesday, and also against Getafe before the international break. After the Galatasaray game he said he had not considered a substitution because "we're managing the workload of other players, too", and that Lamine "is very good physically, he's ready for everything". With Spain he added 280 minutes in four games during the break.
Behind the scenes, Barcelona's line is that Lamine is fine and wants to play, and nobody at the club has suggested an injury. What happens next: Betis v Barcelona at La Cartuja on Saturday, 17 October, at 18:30 CEST, then PSG away on Tuesday and Real Madrid at the Camp Nou on 25 October.
Barça's issue is who decides, not fatigue
Our editorial team agrees with Brau: the worry is not that Lamine is tired, it is that a 19-year-old is effectively choosing his own minutes. More than 1,100 minutes in six weeks is fine in October and expensive in March. If Flick leaves him on the bench for part of Saturday's game at Betis, with PSG and the Clásico next, that will tell us the coach has taken the decision back.
18+Play responsibly