Lamine Yamal's Knee Keeps Him Out of Prague — Spain Want Him Back for England

Lamine Yamal will not be in Prague on Thursday. The Spanish federation said on Monday that the Barcelona winger reported discomfort in his right knee after Sunday's 2–1 win at Atlético Madrid, had tests, and will stay in Barcelona to continue his recovery instead of joining Luis de la Fuente's squad at Las Rozas. He misses Spain's Nations League game against Czechia. Mikel Oyarzabal misses it too — the Real Sociedad forward is finishing a bout of flu in San Sebastián — and Liverpool winger Víctor Muñoz has been called up in Yamal's place.

Nothing about Sunday suggested a problem. Yamal played the full 90 minutes at the Metropolitano, and in the 66th minute he slipped the pass through Atlético's back line that Fermín López turned into the winner. That assist was the 40th of his LaLiga career. He reached it at 19 years and 118 days — the youngest player in the league's history to get there, and the first ever to do it before turning 22, according to MisterChip's records. The performance that took Barcelona three points clear at the top is also the one Spain are now managing him through. Every goal and stat from the night sits on the match's Game Center page.

The word out of the Spain camp on Tuesday was calm. De la Fuente told the EFE agency the discomfort is minor — his view was that Yamal could have played on Thursday if the game had demanded it — and traced it to a small inflammation he has carried since the Champions League win over Aston Villa on November 3. Tests on Monday morning found no serious damage, and the decision to hold him out of the Prague trip was reached jointly by Barcelona's and Spain's medical staffs. The plan is for Yamal to reach Las Rozas late on Thursday, after the Czechia game, or on Friday morning, which would give him two training sessions before England.

Spain can afford the caution in Prague. They have won all four of their group games for 12 points and are already into the quarter-finals; Czechia sit bottom without a point. Sunday is the game that matters. England, second on nine points, come to the Metropolitano — the same stadium where Yamal felt the knee — with first place in the group still open. A win in Prague and a draw on Sunday would lock up top spot for Spain, and the federation expects both Yamal and Oyarzabal to be available for it.

While Yamal rests, the races he is running stay exactly where he left them. The Pichichi table did not move on Sunday: Raphinha leads on 15 goals, Kylian Mbappé is second on 13, Yamal third on 10 — and Yamal still leads the league's assist chart outright, with eight. His rivals are not resting. Mbappé is back in the France squad for games against Italy on Thursday and Türkiye on Sunday after missing his country's last three matches, and Raphinha travels with Brazil, who play Japan in a friendly on Saturday.

The league table is frozen with it. Barcelona hold 33 points from 12 games, Real Madrid 30, Atlético 28, Real Betis 26 and Real Sociedad 22. When LaLiga returns on November 22, Barcelona host Villarreal, Madrid host Celta Vigo and Atlético go to Getafe. Yamal had started all 20 of Barcelona's and Spain's games this season before this week. The first one he misses is a game Spain chose to give him. Whether the knee lets him take the big one back, in the stadium where he hurt it, is the only question the break has left.