France 1 Spain 2 Mike Maignan is standing in the perfect spot. Now he’s diving across to his right, a gymnastic yellow burst, elastic limbs stretching to cover every single millimetre of the upper left of his goal, every entry point blocked. But there’s a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in. How the brilliant light of Lamine Yamal came rushing into this place at 9.21pm Munich time, a Tuesday timestamp that should be remembered forever.
A Tuesday? If it wasn’t July it would be a school night and you’d think the 16-year-old should be brushing his teeth. Instead his curling thing of wonder brushes the inside of the post and he’s wheeling off to meet a bench full of grown Spanish men. Records tumbled at his feet like confetti, social media feeds scrolling at a faster rate than the ball spun.
They list Pelé, Wayne Rooney and plenty more. Icons and wunderkinds consigned to a second spot behind the Spanish winger whose future we cannot know but whose night here shall live forever. Yamal’s goal turned this semi-final upside down even 20 minutes in.
It would never turn back France’s way, in spite of how well Didier Deschamps’ men started, Kylian Mbappé unmasked on a murky hot evening and looking like himself. Four minutes from the end, he cut in with the best chance to rescue his side but lashed it over. It only feels a short time since he was a teen in Russia with the world at this feet.
Now, here he was upstaged by a player nine years his junior. .
