Lamine Yamal says displays against Dembele and Mbappe may have made them dislike him

Lamine Yamal says he believes his performances for Barcelona and Spain last season put him among the best players in the world, while joking that his performances against Ousmane Dembele and Kylian Mbappe may have made the pair less fond of him.

Barcelona begin their Champions League campaign against Feyenoord at Camp Nou on Wednesday, and Yamal said the club’s main ambition was to win the competition.

“I think there is no greater motivation than winning the Champions League,” he said at his pre-match news conference. “The whole team is motivated to achieve that. At Barcelona, we always think about this competition because it is the most special one. Maybe this is our year. Players such as Rodri, Gordon, Adeyemi, Gabriel and Cancelo have joined us, and we will see if we can win the title.”

Yamal also spoke about the responsibility of being one of Barcelona’s captains at the age of 19.

“It is a great honour to be one of Barcelona’s captains at 19 and I am grateful to all my team-mates,” he said. “This responsibility makes me more responsible despite my young age, but I am very happy and will try to give my best for the team.”

On the Ballon d’Or, Yamal said the decision was out of his hands but insisted he had a strong case after what he described as an outstanding year for both club and country.

“I think it depends on you, not on me,” he said. “The work we have done this year has been amazing, both with Barcelona and the national team. If I win the award, the first thing I will do is thank my club and my national team. I think I have a great chance of winning it because I have had a great year.”

Yamal added that he would not campaign for the prize or try to persuade people that he deserved it.

“I do not think I need to promote myself,” he said. “I will not try to convince you that I deserve the Ballon d’Or. Everyone has the right to see it the way they want. I am proud of the season I have had with my club and the national team. We became world champions and won the league again, and I cannot ask for more than that. I think I performed at a very high level among these players and put in a lot of work. I will not start begging to win anything.”

The teenager said Barcelona would need to match the intensity of Europe’s leading sides, warning that Feyenoord would punish them if they failed to work hard.

“It is enough to look at the teams that have won trophies recently,” he said. “At Paris Saint-Germain everyone presses, and here at Barcelona we also try to press together. I may lose concentration sometimes, but I quickly return to pressing. In modern football, if you do not run, any team will beat you, no matter what your name is. If we do not run tomorrow, Feyenoord will beat us. It is about the benefit of the team. If we want to win, we have to run. If we do not, we will lose.”

Yamal said his collective objective was to continue winning trophies, particularly the Champions League, while he wanted to keep improving individually.

“I am still a very young player and there are many aspects of my game that I can improve,” he said. “I believe I can always develop if I continue listening and learning. That is my goal.”

He praised Barcelona team-mates Fermin Lopez and Dani Olmo, explaining that the two players offered different qualities.

“Fermin tends to move into space and passes the ball to me before making his run, while Olmo prefers to keep possession and play with the ball,” said Yamal. “But my relationship with both of them is excellent, on and off the pitch, so I feel very comfortable playing with either of them.”

Asked about Real Madrid not winning for two years, Yamal replied: “If Real Madrid have not won for two years, that is their problem. I do not know. We are very happy with the refereeing and everything else. Those questions should be put to them. I see them as happy.”

Dembele, Yamal’s former Barcelona team-mate, did not include him among his top three Ballon d’Or candidates. Yamal responded with a light-hearted remark about Dembele’s friendship with Mbappe.

“He is Kylian Mbappe’s friend, isn’t he?” Yamal said. “In any case, it does not matter to me. I am happy with the season he has had. I think that every time I faced the two of them together, perhaps I did something that made them dislike me, and that is normal. My relationship with Ousmane is good, and I understand that he wants to choose other players. But I am happy with what I have done this year and confident that everyone saw it, even if he did not.”

Yamal also rejected suggestions that he was unhappy despite the attention surrounding him.

“I am very happy. I do not know why there is all this discussion,” he said. “In the end, I am 19 and I was coming back from winning the World Cup, then I had the best holiday of my life, so I was extremely happy. It seems as if everything suddenly changed, but I am still the same person I have always been and I have a great deal of support. I have never been happier at any point in my life than I am now.”

Barcelona were eliminated from last season’s Champions League after losing to Atletico Madrid in the quarter-finals.