Lamine Yamal also fills Barça's belly in Europe

How many goals Barça will score is a question that is not even quoted as long as Pedri and Lamine Yamal are on the field. It is a matter of time before one shakes his wand and the other sharpens his fang so that, even without a cigar, he ends up having a feast. If in the League he destroys rivals without mercy, when he crosses the border he finds tough rivals who tickle him... too. Because the more uphill a duel gets, the more Lamine agitates the team to unleash a voracity that ends up filling their bellies. He doesn't even need Raphinha. [Narrative and statistics: 1-4]

It is not the perfect Barça, because it is a titanic task to keep a clean sheet in Europe, but it needs little to adjust the sights. It took Galatasaray half an hour to withstand the gale that Pedri unleashed with every ball that passed through his boots. Without the Brazilian, that blessed 9 that Flick found, he had to play without a clear reference, with Dani Olmo as the forward player, but with Lamine, Anthony Gordon and even Fermín appeared to disrupt the Turkish defense, which began harassing with fouls.

The Canarian is capable of thinking clearly under all the pressure you can imagine and found Olmo, with a filtered pass that brushed Lamine to cancel everything for offside, but also the English winger, who submitted to Yilmaz again and again. Barça entered the area with ease, although without finding the lucidity of the definition. It seemed a matter of patience for one of the talents in the Barça attack to adjust that last shot. It was Olmo who had the best chance in a cross from Lamine to the far post that he could not connect with a header.

Half an hour of Barça dominance that Rafael Leao erased with a stroke of the pen, beating Eric García on the left side to serve a ball to the front where, alone, Batrakov appeared to finish it off, with such good luck that a slight touch from Cancelo in his attempted clearance prevented Joan Garcia from stopping. In the first counter, Galatasaray already had a prize. But I can still do more damage. In a corner at the far post, Osimhen appeared, without Cubarsí on his watch, to comb the ball and Yilmaz sent it with another header into the back of the net. This time luck was with Barça because the Turk was slightly ahead and the VAR lines caught him. The goal was not added to the scoreboard because, although it seemed like too much punishment, it had been the result of the successful awakening of the Ottomans.

That knock woke up Hansi Flick's team again on the stroke of half-time. It was Cancelo who appeared from the left-handed profile to hunt down a ball that remained alive after the Turkish center backs knocked down Lamine and Olmo on the front line. The Portuguese's equalizer allowed Barça to reset and press the accelerator, forcing Galatasaray to rely on their goalkeeper. Çakir saved Gordon's shot with a vital hand and masterfully cleared a direct free kick from the false 9 invented for this match.

Lamine, unleashed

The intensity of the Blaugranas did not decline one bit in the second half. What's more, his fang appeared. If anyone at Ali Sami Yen thought that his team had managed to eclipse Yamal, how wrong they were. That player who midfielder Lemina hesitated saying he had not heard of left his mark in Istanbul.