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The duties and obligations of any FC Barcelona player reach to extents beyond just the football pitch. Despite already being some of the sport’s most coveted stars, any allegiance made to the club is considered a permanent bond. Beyond just the respect they have for Barcelona internally, these players tend to show it off externally as well.

Moreover, one of the ways that players of FC Barcelona, and even Real Madrid, show their allegiance to their club is by denouncing their Clasico rivals. Such is the ferocity of the rivalry and loyalty that is expected from these players from the moment they either dress up in Blaugrana colors or the colors of Los Blancos.

Fortunately for FC Barcelona, their latest and most prodigious of rising stars seems to come from a similar school of thought. Trained and raised within La Masia, 16-year-old Lamine Yamal is a player who Barcelona would ideally wish to retain forevermore, and it looks like the player is on the same wavelength.

In a recent interview, as highlighted by Mundo Deportivo, the Barcelona wonderkid was asked about several different topics. Asked to comment on how much of Barcelona fan he is between 1 and 10, the player’s response was an immediate extreme all the way to the highest number. Soon after, he also made a statement that Barcelona fans all around the world will welcome like music to their ears:

“I would never play for Real Madrid.”

While this statement by itself holds a lot of weight, the player was also questioned about some other pressing details. One such question was about the pressures of being compared to one of football’s greatest and one of the icons of Barcelona, Lionel Messi, to which the youngster presented a fair response:

“Those comparisons come naturally to people, but there’s no one you can compare to him. I try to play my own game without pressure.”

The 16-year-old Barcelona prodigy was also asked to reveal his own idol, and if it was Messi after all, to which he replied with a secondary name as well:

“I’ve always said that Messi is the greatest in history, but the one I enjoyed watching was Neymar.”

In the present day, Yamal has less than 24 hours left to prepare for his biggest challenge yet. Representing Spain at the European Championship and already turning heads, Yamal and his teammates will next face another favorite of the tournament in the form of Germany. Overcoming this challenge will be one of the biggest that the Barcelona pearl is yet to encounter, but it will be crucial for his development.