No one celebrated Spain’s last-32 win quite like Keyne. As the third goal against Austria went in, cameras caught Lamine Yamal’s younger brother, still only three, raising his arms and shouting: “Come on!” And so a million memes were launched in Los Angeles.Not long after, 30 metres below ground – Los Angeles Stadium had to be built from beneath the surface because of its proximity to LAX airport – Lamine Yamal stood on a platform before a scrum of cameras, microphones and mobile phones. Someone in there showed him the footage, asked what he thought about this small boy enjoying the childhood he never could, and there was a pause. “I don’t know …” Lamine Yamal said eventually. “It makes me emotional to see my brother happy, and my mum. He is everything to me. It’s like he is my son and I’m in love with him.”Lamine Yamal is just 18, but he has said before that he has taken on “too much” responsibility for almost as long as he remembers. In a recent interview with El País, he said he first felt something like fame, exposure, when he was 13. At the start of this competition a video did the rounds of him walking round Walmart. Much was made of it, too much you might think and you wouldn’t be wrong, but it wasn’t meaningless. It mattered, and to him particularly: a rare opportunity to do something normal. Or not quite: the video appeared, which said something too.Even here, surrounded by the best players in the world, there may be no one quite like Lamine Yamal. An icon at 18, his image is everywhere, an intense identification with him. In every stadium, every time he gets the ball there is a roar, an anticipation – and with it some kind of obligation. It is like he eclipses all else, and within the Spain squad all the more so.In the build up to the World Cup, it felt like everyone was waiting for him to come back from the injury that kept him out since April; during it, it has often felt like his teammates take their cue from him. Lamine Yamal had said that the group stage was just something you have to do; the real thing starts now, in the knockouts. He had also said that he had “used” those games to feel himself again. If Spain could be Spain, he said, no one is a good as they are. And so on the day he said the World Cup started, it proved to be.Lamine Yamal interactive player guideIt wasn’t just him. All over the pitch Spain impressed. The full backs flew. Dani Olmo found spaces. Luis de la Fuente keeps asking us to talk about Mikel Oyarzabal, and rightly so. But sometimes it feels like it always comes down to Lamine Yamal, another responsibility. The messaging feels like it is his too. After he had said no one could match Spain late on Tuesday night, the following morning before training in Carso his teammates said much the same. And then the next day, against Austria, they showed it. “Almost perfect,” Luis de la Fuente called it.Before the game he had taken the hand of the mascot and asked them if they were OK. Standing there in the tunnel, Olmo had told his “bro” to show his mascot what it was like when he walked into an arena, the reaction he gets, the impact he has on people. And afterwards, Lamine Yamal stood there holding the player of the match award. And he had been a thrilling, dynamic, relentless presence who had drawn gasps with some of his touches, two nutmegs included, and had a belting battle with Konrad Laimer, but even he didn’t seem sure this one was for him. At one point he was even asked if he was happy given he didn’t look entirely overjoyed.“Obviously, yes” he said. “I’m very happy, above all because we’re through. Bit by bit, I am feeling myself, getting the runs I need, the dribbles. This is where it starts: no one wants to go home now and we will do everything we can to stop that. I’m 100% ready to play as many minutes as the manager wants.” And that, as De la Fuente tends to say, is the best news.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I really appreciate the affection I get in every stadium,” Lamine Yamal added. “There is nothing in football better than a World Cup, and when a kid dreams of playing football they dreams of this. I enjoy every moment, from when we leave the hotel. I am 18 years old and at a World Cup; that won’t happen again. We don’t fear any team; we’re Spain. We trust in ourselves.”And how, he was asked, do you avoid all this affecting you? “By focusing on playing football and spending a lot of time with my family,” he said. “They’re the only ones who known me as just Lamine, who I am.”