Euro 2024, the semis: the young boy burns, but there is more to Spain than this

There's nothing contradictory about the twin facts that Lamine Yamal is precociously talented, while the media reaction to him has been weird and a bit creepy.

It’s kind of a shame that Euro 2024 should have ended a full five days before the final is even played, but going by the press reaction to Spain’s 2-1 semi-final win against France it does rather feel as though all the cost and hassle of putting on two football matches might as well be avoided.

Dortmund could be spared hordes of England fans tonight, full of booze, cheap coke and songs about the Second World War. Berlin could have a nice relaxing Sunday evening of quiet before a busy work week ahead. If it’s all as pre-ordained and written in the stars as seems to be suggested this morning, is it really worth all the bother?

The fuss and palaver surrounding Lamine Yamal is, of course, entirely understandable. As Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo fade as players, no-one has really stepped in as a replacement in the headline-grabbing celebrity superstar footballer stakes.

Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe haven’t quite scratched that itch, but in an increasingly atomised and individualistic society it appears that we demand greater and greater focus away from the machine-like operation of teams and onto the cogs that make them up. Small wonder that Ronaldo ended up so fixated on individual records.

(If you want to disavow yourself of the notion that we live in a secular society, by the way, all you have to do is look at the reaction to those pictures of Messi bathing Yamal when he was a baby - the similarities in the reactions to someone being kissed on the forehead by the Pope are most striking.)

And this was the moment that Spain needed at the exact point they needed it. It was, of course, a beautifully-placed shot, the sort of preternatural ability that causes these religious allusions in the first place. Lamal, on the right hand side of the France penalty area, was given just a second too many to clip his shot across and in off the far post. It was a goal that will likely be remembered as one of the defining moments of a tournament which had started to feel like it was petering out as the knockout stages progressed.

Four minutes later Dani Olmo scored a second and… that was kinda that. France had been defensively masterful and not much else throughout the their previous five matches, and Randal Kolo Muani’s early goal was the only one they ended up scoring from open play themselves in the entire tournament. It never felt exceptionally likely that they would be able to get back into the match once they’d fallen behind.

There were still chances for France to haul themselves back into the game. Kylian Mbappe, who by all reports had been having trouble sleeping following his nose break in their opening match, did have one decent chance in the closing stages but had an uncharacteristic moment of indecision and ended up ballooning the ball wildly over the crossbar.

But they only managed three shots on target all evening, and Didier Deschamps’ decision to replace Antoine Griezmann with Ousmane Dembele looked increasingly like a mis-step as the evening progressed. More than once Dembele simply wasn’t in the position that he needed to be in, drifting wide when his team needed him to be in the middle. Few tears will be shed for the departure of a team that promised so much before the tournament started but ultimately delivered very little.

Is Spain’s accession to being the champions of Europe already determined? Well, obviously not. They don’t even know who they’ll be playing in the final yet, and there may be a question or two to be asked about how, if they were so inordinately superior to France, they didn’t get the match killed off earlier. And it’s worth briefly mentioning that, other than the two goals they did score, they didn’t manage much on target all evening.

Furthermore, Spain have only beaten the Netherlands once in the last forty years, while even their last meeting with England, in Seville in 2018, ended in a 3-2 home defeat. This is cup football, and such presumptions have been proved overbaked before. The history of tournament football is littered with the corpses of ‘best teams in the tournament’ that somehow manufactured a way to not win it.

But this morning, this feels like trifling nit-picking. They’ve already beaten Germany, Italy, Croatia and France. It’s not difficult to create an argument that they’ve been the best team in the tournament. There is a question mark over whether Alvaro Morata will be available after he was damaged by a steward sliding into him to avoid yet another fan trying to get a selfie with him after the final whistle had blown in what might be considered an extremely 2024 injury.

But even his loss - which is far from assured, with reports this morning that he should be okay to play on Sunday - wouldn’t feel like a major concern. Spain have plenty in reserve, after all. If there is a reason for their opponents to be concerned about Sunday night, it’s the breadth of talent in their team. Yamal wasn’t even really Spain’s best player against France. Dani Olmo and Rodri, to name but two, were absolutely outstanding yet again.

But they don’t carry the novelty factor of a 16-year old wunderkind, albeit one who turns 17 before the final. Let the kid continue to develop. For every Pele, there are at least three Sonny Pikes or Alexandre Patos, so can we give him a chance to fully blossom before layering him with your expectations? The answer to that question already seems to be a resounding ‘no’.