2023-10-06 07:45:46
PortoDuring Barça-Porto there was a surprise in the Do Dragão press stand. It had just passed the 70th minute of the match when Lamine Yamal left for the dressing room tunnel. The various journalists traveling to Porto exchanged glances and asked each other questions looking for explanations that would arrive shortly after the final whistle. The hypothesis shared by the bulk of the special envoys to cover the match would be confirmed by Xavi himself: the young Barcelona pearl had “an indisposition”.
“He was a bit unwell. He had told me about it and we took advantage when there was a stoppage in the game for him to go to the bathroom. He had a stomachache,” said the coach. The sequence was as follows. In the 71st minute, Lamine Yamal himself voluntarily sent a ball away after a Porto player sat down and called for medical attention. This cut off a chance to go out on the counterattack, a fact that some teammates like Sergi Roberto, Ferran and Cancelo reprimanded him before he left running to the dressing room to satisfy his needs. I’ve needed it for a while. The team was almost 10 minutes down by one. Lamine Yamal was taking so long to get off duty that physical therapist Carlos Nogueira had to go and ask him what was wrong. Nogueira then came back and asked for the change.
From the dressing room they maintain that Lamine Yamal had a stomach ache and that his indisposition had nothing to do with nerves or experiencing a stressful situation. “Before the game he was fine. Then his stomach hurt and he had to go to the bathroom. Nothing more. After that he was fine again,” they told ARA. This is the same version that explains the player’s environment.
What happened to Lamine Yamal “is not usual in football”
It is not the first time that a professional footballer has to leave a match to satisfy his physiological needs. In 2017-18, Sergio Ramos left Madrid with ten for a few minutes against Eibar in Ipurua. It happened to him at a similar moment to that of Lamine Yamal: in the 75th minute, although he was able to continue playing. Zidane, then coach of the whites, explained without a hair on the tongue that Ramos had “shit a little”. The footballer himself made fun of it on the networks, saying that he had heard “the call of nature”. With the rules in hand, as long as the referee is notified, there is nothing wrong with being absent for a few minutes to go to the toilet.
The surprise – and also the comical component – that implies that a first-level footballer has to leave a game due to indisposition is because it is not usual. “You have to differentiate between team sports and long-distance ones, like marathons or cycling. In football you have short breaks. On the other hand, in endurance sports the intensity is maintained over time and is much more common digestive problems, such as abdominal pain, diarrhoea, nausea or vomiting,” explains David Domínguez, specialist in sports medicine and internal medicine at the Sant Cugat CAR and the Clínic and Sant Joan de Déu hospitals.
“This happens because the blood goes, for the most part, to the musculoskeletal area and, consequently, this affects the gastrointestinal supply. In addition, when you do sports, you usually supplement your energy expenditure with food. Specifically, with fast-absorbing carbohydrates. These are sugars and, especially fructose, there are athletes who do not tolerate them properly. They can lead to explosive diarrhea,” adds Domínguez, who insists that it is very “unlikely that this will happen in football , because after making an effort comes a rest and the organs are able to recover”. During half-time of matches, footballers often ingest these types of sugars, with gels or drinks.
There are also the “most common causes, such as infections, whether viral or bacterial gastroenteritis”, as well as “food poisoning” which, in this case, “do not warn”. Domínguez, who between 2015 and 2021 worked in Barça’s medical services -specifically with women’s football, base football and handball-, mentions that it is also necessary to bear in mind if the athlete in question “has any gastrointestinal problems basis that can be accentuated at some point”.
With regard to the mental factor, the specialist decides that nerves can influence this type of indisposition, but specifies that elite athletes are well prepared to manage them. From the Barça dressing room, they deny that the slide to the services of Lamine Yamal had anything to do with nerves.
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