Meet Lamine Yamal: From Meeting Messi as a baby to Spain's record-breaking prodigy at Euros

Updated : Jul 15, 2024 02:36
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Editorji News Desk

Lamine Yamal grew up in the neighbourhood of Rocafonda in Mataro, a city located 35 kilometres north of Barcelona, where spent his childhood playing with his friends in the cement field next to the Rocafonda football field.

The neighbourhood is multicultural and many football fans fill the streets, you can see children and adults with t-shirts from different teams and flags hung over the balconies.

Yamal holds up three fingers and makes an circle with his index finger and thumb, while extending four fingers on the other hand. Arms crossed over this chest, he flashes a smile to put the finishing touch on his particular goal celebration.

While undecipherable to millions of spectators, the peculiar hand sign Yamal made after scoring his first goals for club and country represented the last three digits of the postal code of Rocafonda: 304.

Children in the neighbourhood wished him a happy birthday as he turns seventeen on the13th July, a day before the European Championship final.

Near the football field is a bar called 'El Cordobes' where Lamine's father visits frequently.

"Proud, delighted, happy. Thank God for having what I have, and just that. Happiness." said Lamine Yamal Nasraoui as he sat in front of his son's debut FC Barcelona shirt which was a gift to the bar owner from Lamine Yamal.

20km from Rocafona is a town called La Torreta, the neighbourhood where his mother lived with Lamine when she separated from his father.

There Lamine played for C.F. La Torreta from the age of four to seven - the team coordinator Inocente Diez remembers his time at the club.

EURO 2024

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