Lamine Yamal’s historic ‘work of art’ offers a liberation from the pressure | Sid Lowe

Mounir Nasraoui and Sheila Ebana watched their little boy make history while everyone else watched too, which takes getting used to but is the way it is now and forever. A moment before the second half began on Saturday, Hansi Flick came to an agreement with Lamine Yamal, or tried to. The teenager had scored twice – both superb, the second absurd – to put them 2-0 up against Villarreal and the coach had an idea. If we score the third, we’ll take you off, Flick said; if I score the third, we will, Lamine Yamal replied. Twenty minutes later both happened together and that, he laughed after, was “perfect”, so up went the board with his number on and up went 44,256 people too, applauding as he went.

Back home, following the game on TV and broadcasting to the world, so did his dad. Lamine Yamal slapped hands with Roony Bardghji, delegate Carlos Naval and Flick, but his eyes were turned towards the stands, looking for his mum. He settled into the bench for a while, saw Robert Lewandowski add another to complete a 4-1 victory and then, when the final whistle sounded, headed back out, collected the match ball from Naval and went to find her. “This is yours,” he said, cameras catching another conversation. “I’m going to take it inside and get everyone to sign it, then bring it to you.” Sheila hugged him hard, kissed her “handsome boy”, and waited for him to return so they could go for dinner.

This was the first time she had taken the match ball home. It had taken a while – Saturday was Lamine Yamal’s 163rd senior match – and it had also taken no time at all. Saturday’s hat-trick, his first at 18 years and 230 days, made him the youngest Barcelona player to score one in the league. Only two footballers had ever got one younger in La Liga history – and José Iragorri and Pablo Pombo scored theirs in 193o and 1934, respectively. As for Barcelona’s all-time, all-tournament record: the first of Paulino “netbuster” Alcántara’s threes, aged 15, goes all the way back to 1915 and the Catalan championship.

However you look at it, this was quite something, Lamine Yamal doing Lamine Yamal things, the finishes so, well, Lamine Yamal, so that guy too: a smooth ease to it all, in off the right side and in off the left foot. If the first was good – body opened out, a little lean, ball bent into the far corner, you know the drill – the second was ridiculous. Cutting back closer to the byline and away from Sergi Cardona, he saw Alberto Moleiro step across. “It’s about being calm: when I’m in the area with the ball, I decide what happens,” he said afterwards. Plenty would have decided to look for a penalty; with a flick of the ankle, he decided to lift it over Moleiro’s foot, carry on and curl in, heading off to lean on the corner flag and take in the reaction.

Lamine Yamal celebrates scoring his and Barcelona’s second against Villarreal. Photograph: Albert Gea/Reuters

At the Camp Nou, Lamine Yamal’s mum put her hands over her mouth, all oh my. A “work of art”, the commentator called it as Mounir zoomed in on the TV back home. “I’m watching on telly. Fucking hell, man. Look, here’s the dad you say is never with his son: here I am watching mine,” he cheered, breaking into song on Instagram as the replay went round and round. “I hope the whole world can enjoy him the way I do, 24/7. ‘Lamine Yamal, for good or bad’. Remember that: I invented it. ‘Lamine Yamal, for good or bad.’ Lamine is my son! My son! God bless you, son. Aaaaargh! Number one!”

Nor was Lamine Yamal stopping there, not ready to sit down until they, and he, got the third, an agreement to keep. Pedri, on for half an hour of something approaching perfection at a time when third-placed Villarreal had been threatening to make a real match of this, provided the pass that most couldn’t even see let alone play. Lamine Yamal made a mess of it, or so he claimed, letting it run rather than controlling but doing so turned out to be no bad thing, left one on one. “And then the finish? Well one had to go in,” he said. One? Three had. Counting out the goals on his fingers – one, two, three – now he could go, happily accepting a rest.

“The Lamin3 Show,” ran the cover of El Mundo Deportivo. “The Lamine Show,” ran the cover of Sport, who have an unfortunate habit of turning up in the same dress. “And, he hadn’t even eaten,” one Villarreal-supporting columnist added, this being before sundown in Ramadan. “He tends to play brilliantly against us, and it’s not just the goals,” Villarreal’s midfielder Santi Comesaña said. It’s not: Lamine has nine assists, more than anyone in the league, and has created more chances; he has completed almost twice as many dribbles as the rest in Spain and more than anyone in Europe, a hint of his idol Neymar about him for all the talk of Lionel Messi. But he is now Barcelona’s top scorer on 13 in the league, 18 in all competitions, and the hat-trick was fantastic. It was also a liberation. Or, perhaps more accurately, the expression of one.

“I wasn’t happy,” he admitted.

Lamine Yamal makes no mistake for his third. Photograph: Manaure Quintero/AFP/Getty Images

Back in August when Lamine Yamal scored against Mallorca on the opening weekend, he mimed his own coronation, a statement of intent. Heavy is the head that wears the crown but he was willing. Willing? He wanted to, or so it seemed. Barcelona’s new No 10, he had been handed a six-year contract and the shirt Ladislao Kubala, Luis Suárez, Diego Maradona, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho and Messi wore, had heard his national team coach claim he was “touched by the wand of God” and really had been baptised by the messiah at whose altar they worshipped more than any other. The pressure could hardly have been higher yet that seemed to be the way he liked it. It was stupid to declare him destined to become the best in the world at 17, maybe even there already. Not just stupid, in fact: irresponsible. Yet it was hard not to and, besides, he brought it on himself.

He said he had left fear behind in the park in Mataro when he was a kid and he left many others behind too. He had reached a European Championship final at 16, scoring that goal against France before he could legally drink, drive, vote or smoke. You know this now, it has been repeated often, but take a moment to imagine that on the eve of the final he had to do his school exams. That goal made him the youngest player to score at a Euros or a World Cup, beating Pelé by eight months. Pelé, for goodness sake. He became the youngest ever goalscorer in clásico history too, red and blue braces on his teeth. He led Barcelona through a Champions League semi-final against Inter, whose manager said that a player like him only comes along every 50 years, and when they had been stopped at the gates, he vowed to be back. He finished second in the Ballon d’Or, sure that one day it would come.

There was a cheek, a glint in his eye. “For as long I win, they can’t say anything,” he said. But he didn’t always win, as if it was even about that, and they said plenty. It was amazing how well he – a literal kid – seemed to handle it all, but his was a life exposed. He grew up in the glare, a footballing Truman Show. His relationship with Nicki Nicole was public; when his dad was stabbed, it was too. He went from being a revelation for Spain, the kid they all embraced, wanted to protect, to being the teenager half of them didn’t, the tone changing. When he joked about Madrid in October, it blew up the clásico. But when Kylian Mbappé was asked what advice he would give Lamine Yamal, he said none, insisting: “Leave him alone, he’s a great player.”

The pressure was relentless, not just for him but everyone around him. There is something in the identity of the two players were the youngest to get hat-tricks for Barcelona before: Messi, who you’re never going to match, an impossible aspiration; and Giovani dos Santos, a reminder of exactly that. Talent alone is not enough. You don’t know where you will end up, not just on the pitch but in life. Johan Vonlanthen, whose record he has just taken, is now a Seventh-Day Adventist priest in Colombia. You have to deal with all of that and still deliver.

And that, Lamine Yamal admitted on Saturday, had been hard. A few weeks ago, he had posted a social media message about “my internal abyss”, writing: “I would like to be everything that everyone wants me to be.” His level had been good by anyone else’s standards but those are not his, the demands different. He had suffered a sports hernia which had made the start of the season difficult, an injury that refused to relent and which caused a public confrontation between the Federation and Barcelona over his treatment. “It was that … and a thousand things more,” he said.

“It was a mix of everything; I wasn’t happy on the pitch and I think you could tell. I didn’t feel like smiling on the pitch; I couldn’t find that and I wasn’t happy. I didn’t feel right, didn’t feel good with myself. But for the last week or so I have, and I have that smile back, enjoying football like when you’re a kid. Thing is people want you to score 100 goals at 16 … I would like to as well …” There was a pause and then he laughed. Three at 18 would have to do for Lamine Yamal, heading off with his mum and the match ball, history made once more.