Lamine Yamal can beat a man like few footballers alive. The Barcelona star glides past opponents, finds space where none seems to exist and thrives in one-on-one duels, and that dribbling has made him one of the game's great difference-makers.
According to Sport, the roots of that talent stretch back long before he walked through the doors of La Masia, to a boy who spent most of his day with a ball at his feet.
His earliest opponents were unusual ones. They were his family's dogs.
Yamal looked back on those years in an interview with Florent Torchut for France Football magazine, first published in 2024 and later republished by the Ballon d'Or website.
He revisited his childhood in that conversation, his first brushes with football and the moments that shaped the skill thrilling fans today.
"At home, I loved playing football with my dogs," Yamal said, laughing. "My father used to tell me there was nothing to fear and that they wouldn't bite me, so I had a great time with them. Dribbling past a dog is the hardest thing you can do."
Those games taught him plenty. The animals darted about unpredictably, and the young footballer had to find a way to stop them nicking the ball off him.
"That was part of my learning process," he admitted, "and it was like a training session."
His love of the ball bordered on obsession. His family remember that he never wanted to be parted from it, and that he would sulk when someone took it away, whether for mealtimes or bed.
"I remember carrying the ball in a bag when I went to school," he said. "And right before entering the classroom, I would hide it inside my bag, because the teacher didn't want me to put it on the table."
The dogs were unexpected rivals, but the real schooling came on the concrete pitches of Rocafonda, the neighbourhood where he grew up in Mataró. There, he squared up to children far older than him. The gulf in age and physique forced him to find solutions, to keep the ball and dodge contact.
"I always played against opponents who were seven or eight years older than me, and I had to find ways to get past them so I would avoid being hit," he recalled. Those matches sharpened one of his biggest weapons today: reading a defender's intentions and acting before the contact lands.
"Playing in the sports complex helped me develop the footballing intelligence I had acquired in the street and it became part of my style of play," he explained. He also learned to shrug off the fear of bigger opponents, and to enjoy games even when the odds were stacked against him.
The learning carried on away from the pitch too. He spent long hours watching videos of Neymar, then playing for Santos in Brazil.
With no computer at home, he would head to a friend's house to study the Brazilian's clips. Back in his room before sleep, he tried to copy the tricks.
Lionel Messi, David Villa and Pedro were heroes too, the spine of the Barcelona side he followed on television, the one that fuelled his dream of turning professional.
Yamal admits he was a chaotic player in his early years. The moment the ball reached him, he went looking for the dribble, barely pausing to weigh up the smarter option.
Barcelona changed that. There he learned to read the rhythm of a match, to link with teammates and to sense when to quicken the play and when to hold the ball. Dribbling stayed his main weapon, but now he wields it with sharper judgement and tactical nous.