How close is Lamine Yamal to beating Messi and Neymar’s insane dribbling records?
Barcelona wonderkid Lamine Yamal is almost certain to end the 2024-25 season with the most successful completed dribbles across Europe’s five major leagues – but how do his dribbling stats compare to his idols Lionel Messi and Neymar at their peaks?
The 17-year-old has notched 138 successful dribbles in La Liga this season, which is comfortably more than any other player in the Spanish top flight as well as the Premier League, Bundesliga, Ligue 1 and Serie A.
We’ve taken a closer look at how the rising star’s dribbling stats compare to the all-time greats.
Lamine Yamal’s 2024-25 dribbling stats
A near ever-present for Barcelona this season, Yamal has completed 138 successful dribbles from 31 outings in La Liga – averaging one every 18 minutes.
Manchester City winger Jeremy Doku is the only player in Europe’s major leagues to have completed more than a hundred this season (102), with West Ham’s Mohammed Kudus and Sevilla’s Dodi Lukebakio third and fourth with 87 and 82 respectively.
Doku actually averages successful dribbles more frequently than Yamal, having played considerably fewer minutes. The Belgian notches a successful dribble in the Premier League every 13 minutes.
While top for successful dribbles, Yamal can still refine and improve his game further. His dribbles attempted numbers are through the roof – 275 in total, which is 81 more than any other player in the top European leagues.
The teenager also ranks top in Europe for unsuccessful dribbles (137), 25 more than his close friend and Spain team-mate Nico Williams.
That means that Yamal’s dribble success rate is just a fraction over 50%. That’s not too bad, though; Doku’s success rate is only 55%, Kudus’ is 44%, Vinicius Junior’s is down at 43% and Williams is as low as 36%. Beating players ain’t easy, even for world-class superstars.
Yamal has up to four matches left in Barcelona’s 2024-25 La Liga campaign. Should he feature regularly and continue at his current rate, he could easily end the campaign on 150+ successful dribbles.
Last season Kudus topped the dribble charts with just 124 successful take-ons. The year before it was Vinicius on 112. Allan Saint-Maximin notched 150 in 2021-22 while Lionel Messi topped the charts with 159 in the 2020-21 campaign, his last at Barcelona.
Lionel Messi’s peak dribbling stats
Messi’s most prolific league campaign for completed dribbles was 186 back in 2010-11, a year in which Barcelona won both La Liga.
Pep Guardiola’s era-defining side also won the Champions League that year, and the eight-time Ballon d’Or winner notched a further 79 successful dribbles from just 13 outings in the competition.
That worked out as one completed every 13 minutes in Europe’s top competition, while his efficiency was an impressive 65% success rate.
Yamal still has some way to go to reach those numbers, having notched 42 successful dribbles (and 41 unsuccessful) in the Champions League to date this season, to go alongside his 138 in La Liga.
But remember that Barcelona’s latest starlet is just 17 and Messi had barely broken into the first team at that stage in his own development. It wasn’t until he’d turned 23 in 2010 that he started to reach his peak numbers.
Messi notched 150+ successful dribbles in six different La Liga campaigns (2010-11, 2017-18, 2019-20, 2011-12, 2014-15 and 2020-21) and 100+ 13 times in total, right up to his last season in the European game with 102 for PSG – 2022-23, in which only Vinicius notched more across the major European leagues.
Should Yamal reach 150 dribbles in La Liga, that would be somewhere around the median of Messi’s peak seasons. Not bad for a 17-year-old.
READ: Comparing Lamine Yamal’s Barcelona stats after 100 matches with Lionel Messi’s
Neymar’s peak dribbles stats
“I was five years old when I saw Neymar at Santos, but seven years old when I saw him in person at FC Barcelona at the Camp Nou,” Yamal told CNN.
“It was incredible to see him. Yes, it’s true that (Lionel) Messi was there who was also incredible, but Neymar was something totally different. Neymar has always been my idol. He’s a star, a football legend.”
You can definitely see Neymar’s fearless influence when you see Yamal pick up the ball and instantly think about terrorising his opposition full-back.
The Brazilian’s peak wasn’t quite as long as Messi’s, and in his latter years at PSG he suffered dreadful look with injuries, but when fit and firing his dribble numbers were predictably brilliant.
Including international stats, Messi is responsible for six of the 10 most prolific seasons when it comes to dribbles completed. Eden Hazard and Neymar have the other four, two apiece.
Remarkably, he notched 142 successful dribbles in his debut Ligue 1 season with PSG, 2017-18, despite only featuring in 20 of their 38 games. That works out as a successful dribble every 12 minutes and a stellar success rate of 66%.
Yamal is closing in on matching that tally, as well as his second-most prolific dribbling season at Barcelona – 143 in 2015-16 – but he’s unlikely to catch his idol’s best-ever season in terms of take-on numbers just yet.
Neymar registered 168 successful dribbles from 30 La Liga appearances in 2016-17.
READ NEXT: The three Barcelona icons Lamine Yamal idolised growing up
TRY A QUIZ: The Big Lamine Yamal Quiz: 17 questions on football’s most remarkable 17-year-old