Henry Warns About Lamine Yamal and Compares Him to One of Barça's Great Flops

The match between Benfica and FC Barcelona leaves everything open for the return leg. The decisive clash of the Champions League round of 16 will be decided at the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium, where Hansi Flick's team is the home side. However, not everyone is so convinced that it will be an easy match to conclude, especially due to the narrow advantage inherited from the clash at Estadio da Luz.

Beyond those analyses, Thierry Henry's opinion has focused on a very prominent player of the blaugrana club. Lamine Yamal is, along with Raphinha or Pedri, one of the great hopes of the Barcelona fans for this and the upcoming seasons. The competitive aspirations of the entity presided over by Joan Laporta, undoubtedly, depend on the good performance of the Catalan '19'.

The pressure on the young winger, barely 17 years old, has prompted a striking discourse from this former player of the entity based in the City of Counts. "I've already lived this situation before", recalls the former '14' of Arsenal and FC Barcelona. Moreover, he can speak from experience because he was very close to the true protagonist of the story: "Bojan Krkic".

Thierry Henry recalls that "I invite you to watch it because I don't have time to explain everything": the case of the former Spanish player is very particular and is documented in a very illustrative documentary. Both in that audiovisual production and in Thierry Henry's words, one can appreciate "what can happen to you when you're young".

Warning to Navigators

Especially because "you don't know how to handle everything that's happening to you so quickly". According to the current French U-21 coach, "Bojan got lost in terms of anxiety and not wanting to be seen too much. That's something that sometimes people don't understand and don't want to understand either", confesses the CBS commentator.

"They see you there, you're playing, and they forget that it's a kid who went from being unknown to everyone thinking he's good", he states about these footballers. Bojan Krkic's 'case' has returned to Thierry Henry's memory due to the journey that Lamine Yamal is also undertaking as a player for FC Barcelona. For the former player of the blaugrana entity, Bojan's documentary "is a good way to understand what it's like to be a star too early".

Lamine Yamal may have gone through a similar process. But the Catalan '19', at least for now, has considerably distanced himself from the path of the now-retired forward. Not only because of his performance with the Barça jersey, but because he was one of the most important footballers in Luis de la Fuente's championship-winning scheme in the last Euro Cup.

In this context, Thierry Henry issues a very clear warning about Lamine Yamal. The criticisms of the young forward, as well as the praises, could be fatal if not handled with caution. For now, his personal and professional environment is managing a very delicate context in which, according to Henry's experience, many more things can go wrong than it seems.