When Lamine Yamal sent France midfielder Adrion Rabiot to the shops for a hot dog, he came back with a draught beer and some cashew nuts.
At that time, Yamal was dropping his shoulder, shifting the ball to his left and curling a peach of a goal past France goalkeeper Mike Maignan. The woozy Rabiot should have added popcorn.
It was a goal to behold, one of the best in the Euro 24 tournament.
It was a goal wrapped with a huge significance. It brought Spain back into the match and in contention. It played a massive role in La Roja reaching the final of the tournament where they will face England tonight.
I am long in the tooth in this game and I have seen such goals recurrently. The likes of Kaizer Chiefs’ Abel “Chaklas” Shongwe, Gift Leremi and Franklin Cale, once they brought the ball to their cultured left foot, they would slice the ball into to the top corner, leaving the netkeeper sprawled on the cold surface.
Retired former Brazil and Barcelona’s bow-legged star Rivaldo used to score them with almost sickening regularity – they were his trademark. Once he cut inside from the right, the goalkeeper was a dead man walking.
Bafana Bafana goalkeeper Andre Arendse was one of his “fatalities” and he can attest to this when Brazil came back from a 2-0 arrears to nail the already celebrating South Africans 3-2 at a packed FNB Stadium in 1996.
Manchester City’s Phil Foden is also scoring them almost every week in the English Premier League.
So, what left me in awe, was not the goal itself. It was its significance and the man, nay, the boy who scored the goal. Yamal is only 16-years-old for crying out loud. He became the youngest player to date to score a goal in the semi-finals of the Euros.
Here in Mzansi, 16-year-olds are still ball boys, if they are lucky to have made it that far. Their age mates are experts at smoking hooka pipes and dancing to Amapiano tunes on Tik Tok. Other teenagers are already nyaope addicts and have run away from schools and straight into the arms of merciless drug dealers.
It is just a sad reality that the country is facing.
In the township tournaments such as the Philly’s Games, Mahlobo Games, Orange Farm, Daveyton, the Vaal and Katlehong, acne-ravaged teenagers are being encouraged to adopt show-boating as the norm and how football should be played.
A progressive and win-minded approach is being frowned upon and rolling on your knees with the ball, jumping up and down excites and entertains grown-up folks no end.
Try and argue with passionate off-season diski patrons, they will castrate you.
Orlando Pirates fans have not stopped raving about 19-year-old Relebohile Mofokeng’s exploits in the final of the Nedbank Cup against Mamelodi Sundowns. But Mofokeng is turning 20 this year and his peers overseas are already on 50 caps for their senior national teams – and Mofokeng has only one cap.
He has a very bright future and a talented player like him and Kaizer Chiefs’ Mfundo “Obrigado” Vilakazi should have been regulars a long time ago – but not in Mzansi.
This is an indictment of SA football and it shows the embarrassing gulf between PSL and the progressive countries who are dominating world football.
And as long as we call 23-year-olds youngsters, we are doomed and will always play second fiddle and admire other countries unleashing teen stars, throwing them in the deep end and making them world superstars.
We need to do more as a country and as a footballing nation we claim to be, otherwise, we are going nowhere fast.
