A striking number of FC Barcelona players wear bandages around their wrists on the pitch – without being injured. What’s the reason behind this?
He doesn’t seem to care about his shirt at the moment. Lamine Yamal is currently working his magic for the Spanish national team, just as he did for FC Barcelona in recent weeks. But one detail is different: at club level, the hot Ballon d’Or contender was last seen wearing a bandage around his left hand, whereas in the Nations League he isn’t. Has he perhaps just recovered from an injury?
This question leads nowhere. Rather, Yamal is one of numerous Barça professionals who have developed a penchant for hand bandages or wrist tape. Raphinha and João Cancelo are other recent examples, whilst Gavi and Pau Victor (now at Sporting Braga) have also been in the same boat.
As a result, wild conspiracy theories have been circulating repeatedly on social media for months. They centre on alleged injection sites that supposedly need to be concealed – to such an extent that Raphinha, who had already been wearing wrist tape on both wrists whilst playing for Leeds United, publicly defended himself against these claims a year ago. The truth is, of course, far more mundane.
For Lamine Yamal, it all started on the games console
Lamine Yamal explained over the summer that, out of frustration whilst playing on the PlayStation, he’d hit the television, injured his fingers and deliberately continued to wear the bandage even after he’d recovered. “It suits me very well, just like Karim Benzema. We’ve joked that I’m KB9. I think it looks great.”
Benzema, a former goalscorer for Barça’s arch-rivals Real Madrid, continued to wear a bandage on his right hand after an injury and still does so today. Keyword: superstition. Gavi once used this as the reason for his accessory too. The fact that a bandage can help protect the wrists during the sort of falls typical in football, however, seems to play only a minor role.
Why Yamal does without his lucky charm when wearing the national team’s kit remains his secret for now. He became a world champion without it anyway.