Will that do? Lamine Yamal conjures another magical spell as Barça pass first test | Sid Lowe

When at last it was time for Lamine Yamal to leave, the 19-year-old’s number going up before the 90th minute for only the second time since the opening day, Real Betis fans whistled him all the way to the touchline where Barcelona’s coach was waiting. His work here done, Hansi Flick invited him to take the weight off his feet and his shoulders, not that he wanted to. First, though, he took Lamine Yamal’s head in his hands and, leaning in away from the amateur lip readers, tried to make himself heard over the noise. “I told him I was proud of him because he played a fantastic game,” he said.

At least he could think of something. When Lamine Yamal had opened the scoring just nine minutes into the match that was supposed to find out how good Barcelona really were, it hadn’t been easy. Nothing erudite, anyway. On the morning that Barcelona went to Betis – first versus third, a proper opponent at last – Jorge Valdano had lamented that sometimes he doesn’t have the words, and he always has the words. Valdano had just watched Lamine do that, whatever that was, in Istanbul – an “almost rabona,” the kid called it – and now he had a problem. “If he keeps doing strange things, we’re not going to be able to explain it,” he wrote.

To which Lamine Yamal responded by doing another strange thing that same afternoon, scoring another brilliant goal to set Barcelona on the way to a 5-2 win over Betis in a game that made history. And if Lamine Yamal had been a little lucky three days before, momentarily losing control only for the rebound to bounce back to him like the ball knew where it would rather be, this was all him and very him. The move started with Gerard Martín losing his boot and ended with pretty much everyone else losing their heads. In Martín’s momentary absence, Rodri dropped into defence and began it from there, the ball moved across the box and back until it was played up to Lamine Yamal. His superb pass with the outside of the boot unlocked everything and then, receiving again just inside Betis’s half, he set off.

There’s a moment, Lamine Yamal says, when you can sense the anticipation, feel people getting up one after the other all along the stand, a wave accompanying you, moving with you. At that moment, he says, there’s some inner power and you feel like Superman or Spiderman; the defenders are robots, he says, and however good a robot is, however well programmed to stop him, a human is better. Too fast, too agile, too inspired. Too much thought gone into this, too much psychology. Man against the machines, code this. He rolled the ball one way with his left foot, flicked it the other with the heel of his right, and from the edge of the box, sent it flying into the far top corner.

Somehow. Sometimes you have nothing new to say, you know? It’s not big and it’s not clever but sometimes only swearing will do: sometimes only holy shit! hits the spot. Sometimes you can be sitting alone on the sofa and still shout: ’Oh, my god!’, call them in to watch this. But it won’t be the same when they do, even if it’s sort of better: a chance to slow it down and break it down, see the detail, work out how he did it, like you’re ever going to do that. Because for all the expectation, it’s still a shock seen live, the purest reaction of all.

Words? Pah! This weekend, Gabriel Jesus put it best: as the ball passed him, he just held his head in his hands. Lamine Yamal ran to the corner. Fermín López chased, wiping his brow: woah, what was that? Adeyemi went wagging his fingers. On the touchline Flick almost took off his assistant’s hand with the hardest high five. Teammates ran towards him not so much celebrating as laughing, so good it’s funny and even funnier for being repeated, an outrageous goal his catchphrase. Lamine Yamal sat alongside Jules Koundé on the advertising board, arms crossed like it was easy, like ’what are you lot losing your heads about?’ Maybe it is. And there is something in the way he hit it that felt a little like he put it in the top corner because, well, why not? Might as well.

Lamine Yamal got up, stood holding the corner flag, looking about: will that do? If this was the first test Barcelona have faced, it hadn’t taken him 10 minutes to score again, and like that. And that’s the thing. Who knows, this might not even have been the best goal of the weekend: there were glorious moments from Arda Guler and Kylian Mbappé in Madrid’s win against Sevilla. Javi Rodríguez’s run was wonderful for Celta against Alavés. And Pablo Martínez’s shot in Málaga’s 2-5 loss to Real Sociedad was ridiculous. It might not have even been the best shot of this game had Gio Lo Celso’s “goal” not been ruled out. And it definitely might not even be the best Lamine Yamal has scored, but this keeps happening. Statement after statement.

He didn’t stop there either: there was an absurd pass from which Adeyemi should have scored. A run through three. Another assist. And the moment that got the Betis fans whistling him: when, with Fermín on the ground and Lamine Yamal going over, Facundo Bernal pushed him, he took a run up and pushed Bernal back, and the defender head-butted him, seeing red. The game hadn’t stopped with his first either; instead, Rodri said afterwards, it had “everything”. Always watch Betis, especially when they’re playing Barcelona: unbeaten in 15 home games, the last time anyone beat them here was Barca too. And it finished 5-3. This time they were only one short.

Barcelona had dominated the first 25 minutes, the ball theirs alone but Valentín Gómez headed in to make it 1-1 before Rodri made it 2-1. Within two minutes, Lo Celso had smashed in an extraordinary 25-yard shot on the bounce and the turn to make it 2-2, only for it to be ruled out for a handball fourteen seconds earlier. All that before half-time. And yet it was summed up better by the 30 seconds that passed between Álvaro Valles making a superb save at one end and Joan García matching it at the other; by the 59 seconds that passed between that and Gabriel Jesus getting the third. Or the two minutes 59 seconds between that going in and Ez Abde making it 3-2. Then the fight that followed it, Lamine Yamal tumbling maybe a touch too hard and Bernal walking.

By the time Lamine Yamal did, at last encouraged to rest, Eric García had scored the fourth and it was done. “With this result, we had to make the change,” Flick said; with tensions rising too. Dani Olmo added a neat fifth and it finished. Betis were furious. Asked how it had left him feeling, the manager, Manuel Pellegrini, said: “impotent.” Lo Celso’s goal shouldn’t have been ruled out and Gabriel Jesus’s should, he said. Ask how he felt, Fran García said “frustrated, angry … and tired”. They had given everything, the ovation as generous as their effort had been. “This is one of the hardest games in La Liga,” Rodri said, but Barcelona had won again.

That’s nine from nine, a new record. Now, a word of advice from Mr Wolf. When it comes to historic starts, Barcelona’s previous record was under Tata Martino, who you may remember but probably don’t. “This is a nice thing but we want to win titles,” Flick said; Martino did not. Betis were the first team Barcelona have played in the top half of the table. The rest currently sit in 19th, 18th, 17th, 16th, 15th 14th, and 11th. Harder games are coming: PSG next, then Real Madrid. They also have an injury crisis at the back. But no one is playing like them, and certainly not scoring like them. They have scored 39 league goals, 48 in 11 matches in all competitions.

When Robert Lewandowski, Ferran Torres and Marcus Rashford went in the summer, when they didn’t manage to sign Julián Alvarez, you couldn’t help asking where the goals were going to come from. The answer was everywhere. Thirteen different players have scored. It turns out that they have the best striker in Europe: Raphinha, the man who is just filling in there, has scored more than anyone else. They may also have the best player at 19, the kid who came back a World Cup winner and still wasn’t satisfied.

“After the game against Elche at the start of the season, people were saying: ‘He’s not right’,” Lamine Yamal said. “But I was calm at home, thinking: ‘I’ve just won the World Cup, I’ve not had a break, I know my body: bit by bit I’ll get to the point where I explode and start to score. And those same people will suddenly be saying I’m the best.” In the first two games, against Elche and Athletic, Lamine left little. Since then he has scored or assisted in every match. Nine goals, 10 assists, and most of them brilliant. He went to the international break and scored after 104 seconds at Wembley, 70 in Seville, and 320 in Oviedo. Here, on the day they said this time it’s for real, it took him 530, heads in hands, words stuck in throats, and another win on the way.

“It was amazing, a match for all the people who love football,” Flick said. “For me Lamine is the best in the world. I’m happy about his performance; this is what I love to see. And when you see the first goal, it’s unbelievable.”

Unbelievable. That’ll do.