“Hello Lamine, it’s Lionel Messi.”
Adidas was happy to call in a favour when it came to signing Lamine Yamal.
The sportswear giant rented out a huge office space in Barcelona and several of its top executives flew in to meet the teenager and his team in autumn 2023.
The meeting began with one of the Adidas representatives flipping open a laptop and projecting a video onto a big screen.
And there was Messi, the greatest player of all time. Speaking from inside the Inter Miami dressing room, he was part of the Adidas charm offensive.
“I only wanted to tell you that we would be thrilled to see you joining our Adidas family,” he said.
This approach was significant on a number of levels. Yamal was already one of the hottest properties in world football — and the German company was taking him away from Nike, which had been providing him with boots since he was 14.
Nike tried using a personal message from Kylian Mbappe, the biggest football name on its books, to persuade Yamal to side with it, but it had little impact with the Barcelona youngster.
Yamal has been in awe of Messi since he was a child and has always dreamed of following in his footsteps — starting at Barcelona and reaching the pinnacle of world football. Remarkably, those two crossed paths when Yamal was only a baby. During last summer’s European Championship, photos emerged of a 20-year-old Messi giving a six month-old Yamal a bath as part of a project with UNICEF in Barcelona.
Mbappe, meanwhile, is a contemporary of Yamal, a player he is competing against and one whose achievements he hopes to surpass.
In the Supercopa de Espana final in Saudi Arabia earlier this month, he did just that — Yamal scored a goal that was straight out of the Messi playbook to defeat Mbappe’s Real Madrid. The game finished 5-2 and Yamal was one of the game’s stars, alongside his team-mate Raphinha.
Yamal celebrates with the Spanish Super Cup (Yasser Bakhsh/Getty Images)
“When those negotiations were taking place, the idea of him being able to compete with Mbappe seemed a bit crazy,” says a source at Barcelona who was following the negotiations with interest. “But if you look at it now, Yamal is up there. That tells you a lot not just about the talent, but the confidence he has in his abilities.”
The Athletic has been told that Nike’s pitch to Yamal also emphasised how the company helped sports stars shine together, using past examples such as tennis greats Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. When it comes to current footballers, Nike has Mbappe, Erling Haaland and Vinicius Junior — three of the world’s best and most high-profile players.
Adidas told Yamal he would be its symbol for the next generation.
It was a cold and silent battle between the two giants that ended in February 2024 when Adidas and Yamal announced a multi-year contract.
In the reporting for this piece, The Athletic spoke to people close to Yamal and others who work at Barcelona, who are all familiar with the Adidas deal and his other brand commitments. They were speaking anonymously as they did not have permission to publicly comment.
Since spring 2024, Yamal’s profile has rocketed.
He became a star of the summer, winning the Euros with Spain the day after turning 17, and was named best young player at the tournament. His influence and importance to Barcelona has grown to such an extent that they cannot win in La Liga without him — drawing once and losing twice in the three games he has missed in 2024-25.
He has also become the youngest player to ever win the Kopa Trophy (given at the Ballon d’Or ceremony to the best player under 21 in world football), the Golden Boy (awarded by sports journalists to the best under-21 player) and be included in FIFA’s Best XI of the season.
Over the course of 2024, he was the most-searched athlete on Google in Spain, and the second-most searched athlete in the United Kingdom, ahead of the U.S. gymnast Simone Biles, the England and Real Madrid midfielder Jude Bellingham and Great Britain’s Olympic swimmer Adam Peaty.
Shortly before Christmas, Adidas released their latest collaboration with Yamal; a personalised line of F50 boots named LY304 — his initials and the postcode of Rocafonda, the neighbourhood where he grew up in the Catalan city of Mataro, to the north east of Barcelona.
The promotion campaign included Yamal dressed in a pink graduation robe, a reference to him completing his high school studies last summer while at the Euros with Spain. A banner with Yamal and his new boots was draped over a building in the heart of Barcelona, at the junction between Avinguda Diagonal and Passeig de Gracia.
His impact is being felt far beyond Spain though, and Yamal’s camp are exploring setting up new social media channels for the teenager in the Asian markets.
Yamal may not be old enough to drive a car in Spain but he is already more than the face of one of the world’s biggest football clubs — and big brands are circling.
Yamal already has commercial relationships with four other global brands: Beats Electronics, who provide him with headphones, the sports drink Powerade, the electronics company Oppo and Konami, the entertainment and gaming company.
Yamal will also become part of the Kings League, a seven-a-side football competition launched by Gerard Pique two years ago. The teenager will be the owner of a new franchise from this summer.
All the brand development and day-to-day management around Yamal is currently being handled by the PR company The Underdogs. They work alongside Polaris, a company set up to negotiate and complete the contracts for all the players under the umbrella of the Gestifute agency run by Jorge Mendes.
The biggest turning point when it comes to interest levels in Yamal so far has been Euro 2024. He was integral as Spain won all seven matches on their way to lifting the trophy in Germany, and his goal against France in the semi-final was one of the moments of the tournament.
There is a massive appetite from sponsors to partner with him — both from those already associated with Barcelona wanting to have him in their campaigns, and those not linked to the club.
A couple of examples underline the scale of how much companies are willing to invest in Yamal. One of the main things Adidas have done with him this season involved a photoshoot where it rented out a whole beach in the city of Gava, which is 20 kilometres south west of Barcelona. Hundreds of Adidas employees, many travelling from different continents, were involved in the shoot.
A few weeks earlier the electronics company Oppo hired a space in Barcelona’s cruise ship terminal to record an advert which took five hours to complete.
It is very easy to forget he is still only 17 and both Yamal’s entourage and Barcelona have been conscious to limit his number of commercial obligations with club partners this season, given he is in such high demand.
So, what might the future hold when it comes to Yamal — the brand?
The player’s camp think less is more. They want what they describe as “meaningful relationships” with high-end partners, rather than collaborations with a huge number of brands.
The partnership with Beats is an example of that. Yamal was a big admirer of their headphones way before he broke into the Barcelona first team, and he was thrilled when Beats started sending him products just as he was about to make his professional debut.
After he broke into the team, and given the previous relationship with the brand, he was happy to sign a deal with Beats.
One of the most powerful images of Yamal this season came during the famous 4-0 win away at rivals Real Madrid in November. Yamal celebrated his goal with a beaming grin, showing off some sparkling bespoke braces on his teeth to a furious Bernabeu crowd.
Yamal shows his personalised braces at the Bernabeu (Guillermo Martinez)
They included a special piece of Barcelona-themed jewellery — six blue and red stars — designed by the local brand TwoJeys. The company’s Instagram post received 2.8million likes, by far its highest engagement on a single post.
Yamal agreed to wear the braces because of his good relationship with the TwoJeys owners and local media reported that the player did not receive any payment for doing it.
He has received approaches from betting companies, all of which have been rejected.
Away from his existing commercial partnerships, there is one organisation that Yamal has been actively keen to work with — UNICEF. He has been volunteering with the UN agency that provides help to children worldwide and launched a campaign which featured his younger brother Keyne on November 20, World Children’s Day.
Unsurprisingly, Yamal has an incredibly strong following on social media. Nearly 50million people follow his accounts on TikTok (23.8m) and Instagram (24.7m). When he signed for Adidas he had around 5m followers on Instagram, which underlines the growth in awareness over the past year. He is not on X, and there is no plan for that to change.
He has grown up in the social media era and while other sportsmen often have little idea what is being posted on their accounts, he is involved in everything that is published on his social profiles. He is comfortable using TikTok and Instagram and wants it to give insight into his personality.
Sometimes his insistence on creating content exactly how he wants comes at a price, and he often stays at photoshoots and recordings for much longer than expected.
He uses social media to motivate himself and respond to things in the football world, and enjoys using memes to make a point. In the build-up to the Euro 2024 semi-final against France, he posted an Instagram story following comments from France midfielder Adrien Rabiot, who appeared to suggest he and his team-mates were confident of stopping Yamal. “Move in silence, only speak when it’s checkmate,” Yamal wrote. Spain won the game and Yamal scored the best goal of the tournament. Afterwards, he posted a one-word story on Instagram: “Checkmate”.
After a 5-1 win against Mallorca at the start of December, Yamal liked and shared a piece of art by local artist Miki Noelle, who had drawn the youngster producing one of his trademark trivela passes. Yamal even used it as his profile picture on Instagram for a week.
Social networks are, for him, a tool to express himself, define his personality and have fun. He knows that he is seen as a role model for a younger generation, and wants to make meaningful use of his growing online platform.
His football talent will not be relatable to anyone — but his background story is. He was raised in one of the most segregated areas in Catalonia, the Rocafonda district in Mataro, and he has not had an easy upbringing. But he is proud of his background and journey so far and is determined to show others anything is possible.
One new contract Yamal is expected to sign very soon is with Barcelona.
His most recent contract extension was in October 2023, and that deal lasts until June 30, 2026. However, there were foundations laid with that deal for it to be improved and extended for another four years from his 18th birthday (July 13, 2025).
But Yamal has achieved an awful lot since those discussions in October 2023. What seemed fair then is unlikely to reflect his situation now — particularly when it comes to that 2026-2030 extension. He has done far more than what anyone would have expected then.
For that reason, his agent Mendes plans to sit down with Barcelona and renegotiate. The club are aware of this and expect conversations over a new deal.
“Yamal will probably extend his contract with Barca soon,” Mendes said last month before the Global Soccer Awards in Dubai. “I can’t tell you if that will be done in a month or two, but it will definitely happen.”
“I don’t know when [the contract will be signed], but I believe it’ll be soon,” Yamal said in an interview with CNN earlier this month.
“In the end, Barca is the club of my life. I hope to renew my contract with them, and to be with them as long as possible.
“I want to play in the Spanish league. I want to play for Barca, and yes, I will renew my contract. I will.”
Mendes will be keen to get the best deal possible for Yamal not just because of his importance to Barcelona on the pitch and as a homegrown player, but also after the club failed to bring back two of his other clients, Joao Cancelo and Joao Felix, after they spent last season on loan there.
Senior sources at Barcelona told The Athletic the club had informed Mendes they would do whatever was possible to sign Cancelo and Felix for the 2024-25 season. That did not happen, so Mendes has an axe to grind — and an asset that Barca cannot afford to lose.
Back in 2021 the agent brokered the last contract extension between Barcelona and Ansu Fati, La Masia’s previous rising star. It was a six-year deal until 2027, and it gave Fati a significant pay rise (local reports put his annual salary at €14m — £11.8m; $14.6m — which is around €250,000 a week).
Given Yamal’s recent accomplishments, do not expect him to sign a new deal lower than that.
(Photos: Getty Images/Design: Eamonn Dalton)
