June 17, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nYamal was only fit enough to play 19 minutes of Spain’s surprise 0-0 draw with World Cup debutants Cape Verde in their opening Group H clash on Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 19-year-old watched on as his team struggled in the final third, while also watching some of the world’s best players get their campaigns up and running in North America.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kylian Mbappe, Harry Kane and Erling Haaland all scored twice for their respective nations, though Yamal was not feeling the pressure to match those around him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“My style of play is different. I want to enjoy myself, to win, I don’t want to score 16 goals and get eliminated in the semi-finals. That’s not what I’m looking for,” Yamal added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Spain have failed to win any of their last four\u00a0World Cup games (D3 L1), their joint-worst winless streak in the competition, and face Saudi Arabia at\u00a0Atlanta Stadium next.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Luis de la Fuente did not reveal whether Yamal would start against Saudi Arabia, with the Barcelona attacker adding that while he’s fit and ready to go, he is not ready to complete a full 90 minutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I’m fine, I’m feeling good, \u200bbut it’s too soon, it’s unnecessary; I’m still settling in,” Yamal said.<\/p>\n
“It’s not the right time to play a full match yet \u2013 but I can play for as many minutes as the manager wants.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I want to be on the pitch; at the end of the day, \u200beven if you know you can’t play for 90 minutes, you always want to get out there and \u200chelp \u2060the team.”<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Read More<\/a>SoccerNews Editorial Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Soccer Lamine Yamal insisted that there is no\u00a0better player in the world than Lionel Messi following his hat-trick heroics in Argentina’s World Cup opener against Algeria.\u00a0 Messi helped Argentina kickstart their World Cup title defence with a bang after he stole the show in their 3-0 victory at\u00a0Kansas City Stadium on Wednesday.\u00a0 The eight-time Ballon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":914183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38479,1130,2005],"tags":[6183,9568],"class_list":["post-914182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hes","category-history","category-soccer","tag-hes","tag-history"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=914182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/914183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=914182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=914182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=914182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}