★ Moneyball Original · Scouting
Lamine Yamal at 19: is the best teenager in football still getting better? The numbers
By Moneyball Editorial · published · updated
Lamine Yamal is 19. Most players of that age are judged on promise. He is judged on whether he was the best player on the pitch, every week, and at FC Barcelona that is now the normal standard.
That makes him a strange subject for a scouting column, and a useful one. If Moneyball's twelve methods are any good, they should say something sensible about the one young player everybody has already watched. So this column is a test of the model as much as of the player.
This column does what Moneyball always does with a story like this: it puts the numbers under it. Twelve methods, the Stats Centre for the player and for his club, and the report from Scouting Players Research. Everything is explained in plain words, so you do not need to know what xG means before you start.
How to read this, in plain words. The Moneyball Score is a number from 0 to 100. It asks one question: compared with every player in the same position, how much does this player do of the things his position is there to do, for every 90 minutes he plays? Around 50 is an average regular. Above 70 is a starter for a club in European competition. Above 85 is among the best in the world. Potential is where the score is expected to go as he ages, from the way players in his position usually develop. Moneyball Value is a fair transfer fee worked out from his score, age, position, league and minutes. A young player with few minutes is deliberately scored with caution: the model would rather be late than fooled.
1. His season so far
| 2026/27 | La Liga | League and European cups |
|---|---|---|
| Minutes | 995 | 1355 |
| Matches | 12 | 16 |
| Goals | 10 | 13 |
| Assists | 8 | 12 |
| Expected goals (xG) | 7.47 | 9.35 |
| Goals per 90 | 0.90 | 0.86 |
| xG per 90 | 0.68 | 0.62 |
| Shots per 90 | 5.8 | 5.5 |
| Key passes per 90 | 3.8 | 3.7 |
| Successful dribbles per 90 | 4.4 | 4.3 |
| Average match rating | 8.51 | 8.45 |
Lamine Yamal has played 995 La Liga minutes for FC Barcelona: 10 goals and 8 assists. Totals flatter players who play more, so scouts divide by minutes and multiply by 90: what would he do in one full match? Per 90 minutes he scores 0.90, which is 1st of the 127 midfielders in the league with 270 minutes or more.
2. Expected goals: were the goals deserved?
Expected goals (xG) gives every shot a value between 0 and 1: how often a shot like that goes in. A penalty is about 0.76. A shot from 30 metres is about 0.03. Add up a player's shots and you get the goals an average finisher would have scored from his chances.
His chances have been worth 7.47 xG and he has scored 10. That is 2.5 more than the chances were worth. Some of that is finishing skill and some is a hot streak; the regression method expects the gap to narrow, so judge him on the chances he keeps getting. On xG per 90 (0.68) he is 2nd of 127 midfielders in the league. He also creates: 3.8 key passes per 90, 4th of 127. A key pass is a pass that leads straight to a team-mate's shot. And he beats his man 4.4 times per 90, 2nd of 127.
3. How much should we trust these minutes?
This is where most hype goes wrong. 1355 minutes is about 15 full matches. Moneyball treats a small sample the way a careful scout would: it believes it only in proportion to its size. He has 100% of the 1,200 minutes the model wants, so his score is read at full strength. This is called Bayesian shrinkage, and it is the reason Moneyball does not crown a new star every weekend.
4. Scouting Players Research: the report
Lamine Yamal, 19, plays as a winger for FC Barcelona in La Liga. Strongest for his role in expected assists (est.) and shots. Weakest in dispossessed.
| Scouting Players Research | Lamine Yamal |
|---|---|
| Role and type | Winger, creative winger |
| Moneyball Score (league and European cups, adjusted for strength) | 92 |
| Rank among the wingers of 16 leagues | 2nd of 1385 |
| Rank among the wingers of his league | 1st of 76 |
| Moneyball Value (estimate) | €79.9M to €211.0M (mid €145.4M) |
| Age curve: score in 1, 2, 3, 4 years | 100 · 100 · 100 · 100 |
| What Scouting weighs for his role | Percentile among wingers |
|---|---|
| Successful dribbles | 100th |
| Expected goals | 100th |
| Expected assists (est.) | 100th |
| Key passes | 100th |
| Shots | 100th |
| Big chances created | 100th |
| Accurate crosses | 69th |
| Fouls won | 88th |
The players most like him
| Most like him in Scouting | Club | Similarity |
|---|---|---|
| Michael Olise | FC Bayern München | 93% |
| Désiré Doué | Paris Saint Germain | 89% |
| Kenan Yıldız | Juventus | 89% |
| Antonio Nusa | RB Leipzig | 85% |
| Khvicha Kvaratskhelia | Paris Saint Germain | 82% |
The table of percentiles is the heart of the report. Each line is one thing his position is there to do, and the percentile says how many players in the same position he beats at it, out of every 100. Green is elite, red is a weakness to work on. The "players most like him" are found by comparing the whole pattern, not one figure: they are the players whose strengths and weaknesses have the same shape as his.
14. The club around him: FC Barcelona
| Measure | FC Barcelona | Rank of 20 |
|---|---|---|
| League position (points) | 33 pts from 12 | 1st |
| Expected points (from xG) | 27.9 from 12 | 1st |
| Pi-rating (goal margin vs average) | +0.51 | 1st |
| Strength after shrinkage (xG margin per match) | +1.20 | 1st |
| Projected final points | 89 | 1st |
FC Barcelona are 1st in the La Liga on 33 points from 12 matches. Expected points, the points their chances usually earn, rank them 1st. They have 5.1 points more than their football deserved, so some of the shine around the team is fortune. A player's numbers depend on his team: a forward in a side that creates little gets few chances, however good he is, and a defender in a side that is always under pressure looks busier than he is. FC Barcelona create 2.97 xG a match and allow 0.97.
15. Can a player this good still improve?
The age curve says yes. Wide forwards usually keep gaining until about 24 or 25, and most of the gain is in decisions, not in speed: fewer lost balls, a better choice between the shot and the pass. From 92 today the curve gives him about 100 at his best in the next four years.
The risk is not talent. It is the number of matches in his legs. A player who starts this young has played more senior football by 19 than most have by 23, and no model sees an injury coming. That is the honest limit of this page.
For what it is worth in money: Moneyball Value puts a fair fee between €79.9M and €211.0M today, and the age curve says the number rises with him. It is an estimate from his figures, not a price anyone has quoted.
16. What the numbers cannot see
A fair column says where its method stops. The numbers do not see how he trains, how he lives, how he reacts to a bad month or what the coach asks of him in a given match. They do not see an injury coming. And they are only as good as the minutes behind them. What they do well is remove the two things that fool people most often: the highlight clip, which shows the best ten seconds of a player's month, and the reputation, which says more about his club's fame than about him. Use the score as a careful first opinion, then watch him play.
The Moneyball verdict
No surprise, and that is the point. A Moneyball Score of 92 already puts him at the level of a starter for a club in European competition. The talk is not ahead of the numbers; the numbers got there first. When a model agrees with what every pair of eyes has seen, it has earned the right to be heard on players nobody has watched.
- Per 90 minutes: every figure divided by minutes played, so a substitute and a starter can be compared fairly.
- League-strength adjustment: Moneyball Scout weighs a season in Ligue 1 at 0.90 of the same season in the Premier League (Serie A 0.95, La Liga 0.96, Bundesliga 0.94).
- Bayesian shrinkage: with few minutes a figure is pulled toward the average of his position, so three good matches are not mistaken for a great player.
- Last season at 70% weight: last season's figures are blended in, a little lighter than this season's.
- Percentiles within his position: a centre-back is ranked against centre-backs, a winger against wingers. The 90th percentile means better than 90 of every 100.
- Role templates: each position is judged on what it is there to do; a striker on chances and goals, a full-back on defending and crossing.
- Position familiarity: where else he could play, from where he has played.
- Win-rate impact: the points he adds to a club over a season, by replaying its matches with and without him through the Dixon-Coles model.
- Expected goals (xG): the quality of every chance, so a team is judged on what it created and allowed, not only on what went in.
- Expected points: each match's xG run through a Dixon-Coles score matrix (the Poisson model with the low-score correction the Match Board uses) to give the points a performance usually earns.
- Age curve: how players of his position usually develop year by year, used for his potential.
- Moneyball Value: a fair fee from his score, age, position, league and minutes.
Analysis by Moneyball Editorial. This column reports no transfer news: everything in it is measured from matches played. Every figure is read from the Sportmonks data at each update, and the sentences around it change with it.
Lamine Yamal in the Stats Centre Lamine Yamal in Scouting Players Research FC Barcelona in the Stats Centre
Questions
- Who is Lamine Yamal?
- Lamine Yamal, 19, plays for FC Barcelona in the La Liga. This season he has 10 goals and 8 assists in 995 league minutes.
- How good is Lamine Yamal on the numbers?
- His Moneyball Score is 92 out of 100, 2nd of 1385 players in his position across the leagues Moneyball follows. The age curve projects about 100 at his best in the next four years.
- What is Lamine Yamal worth?
- Moneyball Value puts a fair fee between €79.9M and €211.0M. It is an estimate from his score, age, position, league and minutes, not a quoted price.