Former teenage superstar Freddy Adu has urged Lamine Yamal not to make the mistakes he did and to concentrate on football.
Adu was labelled ‘the next Pele’ after bursting on to the scene as a youngster in the mid-2000s. Adu was the youngest athlete at the time to sign a professional contract across all sports in the United States after joining DC United aged 14 and he made his debut for the USMNT two years later.
His early promise soon diminished, however, and he ended up having a nomadic career that took in clubs in Portugal, France, Greece, Turkey, Brazil and Serbia among many others.
Adu: Focus on winning trophies with Barcelona and Spain
Adu, now 36, has watched Yamal’s similar emergence into the big time and has advised him to resist temptation and focus on winning trophies with Barcelona and Spain.
He told Marca: “My advice would be that he concentrates, train and concentrate on his art. Because there will be many distractions. And I’m sure there are right now.
“All eyes are on him all the time, and that is difficult. It’s really difficult. Personally, I couldn’t be a normal boy, and this comes from someone who lives in the United States, and in the United States soccer is not even the most important sport here.
“That’s hard. As a young player, when they put you in a situation like this, it’s very, very difficult to manage.”
Only go on holiday with your mother, Adu tells Yamal
Yamal found himself on the front pages as well as the back over the summer after he reportedly went on holiday with an OnlyFans model 12 years his senior while his 18th birthday party also attracted unwanted headlines after dwarves were brought in to entertain the guests.
It reportedly led to concern from the Barcelona management that he had started to become distracted by off-field matters, although not enough to prevent the Liga and Copa del Rey champions handing the winger a new six-year contract.
Adu admitted he read with interest news of Yamal’s escapades.
He added: ”I’ve seen in the newspapers that he was with a woman much older than him, or something like that, on vacation, and everyone talks about it. Everything he does is going to be a topic of conversation.
“If you go on vacation with an older woman, make sure you only go with your mother! Because at this point, whatever happens, people will talk about it and there will be many distractions.
“As a young man, I made many mistakes. I was young and I made mistakes. I met with some friends and someone took a picture of me at a party or something like that, and it became an important topic. And then the narrative becomes that you are not focused on your game, that you are just out there hanging out with your friends and partying.”
