Barcelona coach Hansi Flick is hoping teenage star Lamine Yamal is fit to face Valencia in La Liga on Sunday after taking a knock. <\/p>\n
The 19-year-old winger did not train with his team-mates on Saturday but instead worked by himself at the training ground. <\/p>\n
“For tomorrow we have to wait, I cannot say it today,” Flick told reporters Saturday. <\/p>\n
“We have to decide if it’s better that he rests or he starts from the beginning, I’ll speak with him and we’ll decide that. <\/p>\n
“Lamine is a player who likes to play football.” <\/p>\n
Flick said Yamal will travel with the team to Mestalla stadium, where Barca are looking to continue their 100 percent start to the season. <\/p>\n
“He trained separately and everything was good, he will travel with us tomorrow,” said Flick. <\/p>\n
“He took a hit and he had some pain so we said it’s better that he trains separately,” added the coach. <\/p>\n
“After the training he said everything was good so he will travel and hopefully he can play tomorrow.” <\/p>\n
Yamal impressed in the 5-2 win over Rayo Vallecano on Monday, netting his first two goals of the season. <\/p>\n
Rivals Real Madrid slipped up in a 1-0 defeat at Real Betis on Friday, giving champions Barca the chance to establish themselves as sole league leaders. <\/p>\n
“When you see the game yesterday, Real Madrid also played well… they had big, big chances,” said Flick. <\/p>\n
“This is football, (slipping up) can always happen. For us it’s important that we focus on ourselves.” <\/p>\n
New arrival Gabriel Jesus is likely to begin on the bench with winger Raphinha staying as the starting striker after notching five goals in three games playing out of position. <\/p>\n
“In this moment (Raphinha) is doing really great,” explained Flick. <\/p>\n
“He’s the best option for us at the moment in this position.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barcelona coach Hansi Flick is hoping teenage star Lamine Yamal is fit to face Valencia in La Liga…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[95],"class_list":["post-81171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-valencia","tag-valencia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}