Protecting Lamine Yamal is a priority as Barcelona maintain winning run | La Liga

Hansi Flick had been warned, and not just by his staff. “They told me this was normal in Getafe games,” the Barcelona coach said when Wednesday night’s match was over, which was probably the best thing about it. Midweek fixtures that mostly just felt like something to get through, match day seven already and with another to go before September ends, had finally finished, at least for Barça, and they were still standing. Still standing at the top of the table and still standing: the 100% record was intact, a four-point lead with it, and so were the players. The ones left, anyway. And that was about as good as it was going to get, something else to celebrate.

Some 102km north, it had just finished 0-0 between Girona and Rayo Vallecano, but at least there was a dog on the pitch pre-game. The night before, 345km south in Valencia, there were no goals either, Osasuna’s manager, Vicente Moreno, admitting “both teams accepted a point”. Now the team that had scored five, four and seven in their previous three league games got just one. Ultimately though, Robert Lewandowski’s seventh this season, gifted early by the Getafe goalkeeper David Soria’s failed catch, was enough. Because Borja Mayoral, given a glorious chance to get Getafe’s first La Liga goal from open play and snatch a draw on 93min 54sec, almost missed the ball entirely, Barça’s midfielder Eric García putting it best postgame when he said: “Pfff.”

Sixty-three seconds passed between that and the final whistle, safety. “It was,” Alex Balde admitted, “a big scare.” It wasn’t the only one, but they had survived. Passing Balde as he talked was Lamine Yamal, still not a man but named man of the match again. For the first time this season, the 17-year-old directly involved in nine goals in eight games had not scored or provided an assist – he had hit the bar and forced a superb save from Soria – but, for the sixth time, he had lasted 90 minutes, not least because he’d had to. He was limping as he made his way but he was walking, and that was no small thing.

Barcelona had come into this game having won 5-1 in Villarreal but at a cost, carrying around a fear that’s not just theirs but everyone’s and which felt all the more acute this week. Marc André ter Stegen had torn a patella tendon and will miss the rest of the season, leaving Iñaki Peña playing and Barcelona pulling a new keeper off the beach, approaching Wojciech Szczesny, who is retired and living in Marbella. Beyond the emotional impact – and there was something comfortingly human about Flick saying he didn’t like being asked about replacements immediately after the weekend’s game – Ter Stegen is the eighth player out. Ronald Araújo, Frenkie de Jong, Gavi, Andreas Christensen, Dani Olmo, Fermín López and Marc Bernal are injured too, several long term. “At this rate, Laporta’s going to get injured too,” as El Pais’s Rafael Cabeleira put it.

Barcelona have been hurt before. Aged 18, Pedri played 73 games in 2021-22, representing Spain not just at the Euros but the Olympics too. Teenager Gavi had been injured the day after Spain’s coach, Luis de la Fuente, had said: “Good players never rest” – a line taken down and used against him. Fermín, 21, went to the Euros and the Olympics, cut short his break and got injured. Bernal, 17, tore a cruciate against Rayo.

While there was relief that Lamine Yamal didn’t do the same as Pedri and Fermín, choosing not to double up this summer, there was an anger that it had ever been a possibility. The anxiety around him lingers, an acute awareness of his vulnerability, a duty of care: he is 17, for goodness’ sake. It is hard to avoid a feeling that this is all too good to be true, soon to be taken away. Ansu Fati is the example: prototype of a prodigious kid cut down by injury.

This week that felt especially present. Rodri’s injury had an impact here too, not least because his was the voice warning about the demands being made on players, a kind of grim irony that he should be the one whose season was cruelly ended. In the two games in which there have been goals so far this midweek, there were other big injuries too, more warnings: Saúl Ñíguez at Sevilla and Kylian Mbappé at Real Madrid. Lamine Yamal had not rested, sitting out 14 minutes all season. At the weekend, in the final 10 minutes, he had been the subject of a couple of horrendous tackles from Villarreal, if tackles is even the word for what they did. And next up was Getafe, football’s bad guys, the dirtiest side of all, evil itself, or so it goes.

The caricature is unfair but that, it sometimes seems, doesn’t stop anyone, and it is true that Getafe have committed the second-most fouls in Spain and that their games have the ball in play less than anyone else’s, someone best avoided. Lamine Yamal needed resting and it was no surprise that many thought if ever there was a time to do so it was this. But Flick said: “I tell Lamine champions don’t rest.” Not when you’re this good. Not when every point counts and all of them have to be fought for – and this is the crux of the issue. Not when there are eight players out already; when your keeper is a no longer your captain but an exposed 25-year-old back-up about whom there are doubts; and when a concession is made with Pedri, who started on the bench. This, Flick said, was too “hard” a game to give Fati the minutes he needs.

It was hard for all of them, a different kind of test passed a different kind of way. “The greyest Barcelona also wins,” said Marca, which was one view. Another was that this team, El Mundo Deportivo claimed, are also “leaders in solidarity”: it had been a victory of “agony, suffering, sacrifice”, it said. García missed a sitter, Lamine Yamal hit the bar, Raphinha headed wide, and Barcelona had 72% of the ball but even after Lewandowski scored it didn’t open up. “Getafe defend very well,” Flick said. Jules Koundé, outstanding all evening, insisted: “You can’t always score lots of goals.” And then, as time slipped away, Barcelona’s control gave way to nerves; the slenderness of their lead leaving them on the edge and their best players on the pitch.

“Getafe are the guest who just won’t leave, their visits tedious, heavy going and never ending,” Santi Giménez wrote in AS. “And when they finally do, you find that they’ve taken all your cutlery,.” Early on, Carles Pérez had a great chance which went straight at Peña: “Heading is not my strong point,” he said after. That was their only effort on target but one last, glorious chance fell to Mayoral. “The last move was screwed up,” García said. “We had a couple of chances to kill it and in the end you almost get a fright, but we got the three points and that was the most important thing.” It was done, seven wins from seven. “I’m proud of my players,” Flick said. Exhausted, Lamine Yamal pushed down his socks, flattened down his hair and headed for the tunnel. He was moving slowly now, but he was still standing.