Spanish phenom Lamine Yamal electrified Euro 2024. In his hometown, family and friends are not surprised

MATARO, Spain (AP) — In the working-class neighborhood where Spain’s teenage phenom Lamine Yamal grew up, there are two soccer fields separated by a chain-link fence.

Next to the green carpet of the local soccer club, local news reports say that Yamal played with his friends on a small concrete slab, where boys and girls now come daily to relax. The balls fly through the netless goal frame and hit a wall bearing the name of the neighborhood in big graffiti-style letters: Rocafonda.

But Yamal’s days of playing pickup games are gone as he blossomed into global soccer’s newest rising star. Now, instead of watching him from a bench, his neighbors will gather around televisions, smartphones or a big screen set up in a park on Sunday to root for Yamal to lead Spain to victory over England in the final of the European Championship.

“He can no longer just walk down the street,” said Juan Carlos Serrano, the owner of a small bar where Yamal’s father would bring him for breakfast before taking the 90-minute train south to train with Barcelona , the club he joined. at 7 years old.

“People are all over him and he’s only 16 years old. He’s just a kid,” Serrano said. “People are just discovering it, but we knew long before it was going to stand out.”

Yamal’s fervor has also rubbed off on his father, Mounir Nasraoui, who paid a visit to see Serrano before heading to Germany to celebrate his son’s 17th birthday on Saturday.

“I’m proud and happy,” Nasraoui told The Associated Press as he sat at a table under the framed shirt of Yamal’s debut with Barcelona’s reserve team, making him the youngest player to do so at the age of 15 years.

Yamal quickly surpassed that point with early debuts and scoring milestones for Barcelona’s senior team and for Spain.

“I always thought he would go this far, but I kept it to myself,” Nasraoui said. “Every father believes that his son will be the best. Whether it turns out to be true depends on the fate of each of us.”

As for Sunday’s final, his father said: “We will win for sure.”

Three-zero-four

Yamal holds up three fingers and makes a circle with his index finger and thumb while extending four fingers on the other side. Arms crossed over this chest, he flashes a smile – including a glimpse of his braces – to put the finishing touches on his special goal celebration.

Although indecipherable to millions of viewers, the strange hand sign Yamal made after scoring his first goals for club and country represented the last three digits of Rocafonda’s postcode: 304.

Rocafonda is home to 10,000 of the 130,000 people who live in Mataro, a coastal town north of Barcelona. From the streets of the hilly area, a blue strip of the Mediterranean Sea can be seen in the distance.

The diversity of Rocafonda and a patchwork of similar neighborhoods in cities across Spain is reflected in the streets. Immigrants run several local shops. Children from all walks of life play football as men in Muslim dress pass them on their way to a nearby mosque.

The son of a Moroccan father and a mother from Equatorial Guinea, Spain’s former colony in sub-Saharan Africa, Yamal helps represent a new, multicultural Spain, a country undergoing a demographic shift where people immigrate while the birth rate from Spain decreases.

“The sign (the 304 hand sign) has become popular throughout the city, not just in the Rocafonda neighborhood,” said Rocafonda councilor José Antonio Ricis. “People in different zip codes are just as excited that he remembers his town, his neighborhood, his people.”

Anointed by Messi

After being spotted by a scout, Yamal entered Barcelona’s famous La Masia training academy, where he would follow in the footsteps of his idol, Lionel Messi.

Had the two players already been linked by fate – or by the football gods? — thanks to a photoshoot for a charity calendar in which a long-haired Messi bathed baby Yamal in a small plastic tub. The photo from 2007 recently resurfaced after Yamal’s father posted it online, causing quite a stir on both professional and social media, with many fans seeing the chance encounter as some sort of anointing by Messi of his heir .

“These are coincidences that happen in life, and later it turns out that this boy is good at football,” Nasraoui called that twist of fate. “It’s a blessing from God.”

Yamal went to live at Barcelona’s youth players’ residence at the age of 13, as he quickly moved up through the minors, despite facing opponents sometimes three years older.

And those gliding, gliding movements, those dribbling details, precise crosses, that Yamal used to stun Germany’s rivals were already there.

whose tears?

Yamal’s meteoric rise has been happening since he was old enough to kick a ball.

He spent his early years between Mataro and another town less than half an hour away, where his mother went to live when he was a small child.

Inocente Díez helps run the soccer program at Yamal’s first club, La Torreta FC, near where his mother lived. He brought him to practice, and when he couldn’t, his father did. Sau Díez said he would pick him up sometimes too because the kid never wanted to miss practice.

Now the summer camp run by La Torreta is called “Campus Lamine Yamal”. Yamal’s picture is on the camp poster, and a family stopped to take a photo of the pitch wearing Yamal’s Spain shirt.

Díez said that in his 50 years in football he had never seen a talent like Yamal. The youngster played with kids two or three years older and was the leader of a team that won the league title.

“A lot of kids can at some point score a great goal or do something special, but he did it every game,” Díez said. “He was a very quiet kid, very respectful, formal and determined to play the ball.

“At that age it’s normal for kids to sometimes want to leave the field, then to want to see their mother, sometimes they can cry. Not him. He just wanted to play and play.”

Yamal was already one of the standout players at Euro 2024 before surpassing Kylian Mbappé – soon to be his rival at Real Madrid next season – with a fine curling strike from outside the area to help Spain edge past France with 2-1. the semifinals.

“Ahh. I cried,” Díez said of the goal that became an instant classic.

“It was very emotional. Because he’s from here.”

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AP Euro 2024: https://apnews.com/hub/euro-2024

Joseph Wilson, Associated Press