Lamine Yamal Draws Inspiration from Neymar as Barcelona Seeks Miraculous Comeback
Lamine Yamal is 16 years old, staring at a 2-0 deficit in a Champions League quarter-final, and thinking about Neymar.
Not the injured, absent Neymar left out of Carlo Ancelotti’s latest Brazil squad. The other one. The No. 11 who tore through Paris Saint-Germain in 2017 and dragged Barcelona to one of the most outrageous comebacks the competition has ever seen.
For Yamal, that version of Neymar is still very much alive — and he wants the world to see him again on the biggest stage.
“He’s my idol”
Neymar, now 34 and back at Santos, did not make Ancelotti’s most recent Selecao list. The omission has fuelled debate over his future with Brazil and whether his time at the very top has passed.
Yamal wants none of that talk.
"He's my idol and I'll always be grateful to him for everything he's given to soccer," the Spain international said in a press conference. "He inspires everyone. He's the type of player that you'll pay a ticket to watch him play, the type of player you'll watch a game again three days later just to see his moves. Hopefully he will be at the World Cup."
No caveats. No half-hearted praise. Just a teenager openly backing the player who shaped the way he sees the game.
Yamal grew up on Neymar highlights. The stepovers, the feints, the impossible angles. Asked about the Brazilian, he didn’t hide how deep that influence runs. Neymar, he said, was “very important” to him during his childhood, a reference point every time he turned on a screen or picked up a ball.
Memories of 6-1
Barcelona now need something close to a miracle against Atletico Madrid. Two goals down in a Champions League quarter-final, they are walking a path the club knows well: hope hanging by a thread, the margin for error gone.
Yamal’s mind immediately went to that night against PSG.
"I've watched (the 6-1 match) several times, and I watched it live as well," he admitted.
That game is no longer just a scoreline. For a generation like Yamal’s, it is mythology. Neymar at full throttle, orchestrating a comeback from a 4-0 first-leg defeat with a performance that felt like it bent the sport’s logic.
Now, as Yamal prepares for his own high-wire act in Europe, he is reaching back to that memory — not as a fan on the sofa, but as a protagonist on the pitch.
LeBron on the profile, comebacks on the mind
Neymar is not the only giant in Yamal’s head this week.
Scroll to his Instagram profile and you find another image: LeBron James, arms raised, celebrating the Cleveland Cavaliers’ 2016 NBA title after overturning a 3-1 deficit against the Golden State Warriors.
That photo is no accident.
"He’s one of the figures who can inspire me for this match," Yamal said. "I’ll think about how he did it and hopefully it works out the same for me."
The teenager is drawing a straight line between two of modern sport’s defining turnarounds — Neymar’s Barcelona and LeBron’s Cavaliers — and the task now facing his own team. From Camp Nou to Cleveland, from 4-0 to 3-1, the theme is the same: when everyone else thinks it’s over, someone refuses to accept the script.
Yamal is trying to step into that mindset. Neymar’s 2017. LeBron’s 2016. His 2026?
A teenager’s wish for Neymar – and for himself
Amid all of this, his wish for Neymar is strikingly simple. He wants him at the 2026 World Cup. Not as nostalgia, but as a force.
In an era that moves on quickly, Yamal is pushing back against the idea that Neymar belongs only to the past. To him, the Brazilian is still the player worth the ticket, still the show you replay days later just to savour the details.
As Barcelona hunt another impossible escape act, Yamal stands at the intersection of eras: a prodigy leading the next generation, fuelled by the heroes who made him fall in love with the game. Neymar once lit up this stage. LeBron rewrote what a comeback could look like.
Now it is the teenager’s turn to see whether those posters on the wall can be turned into something real under the floodlights.
