“We were there with Aureli and at the beginning we saw him and he looked a bit odd, kind of scrawny, he moved a bit strangely, and we said, ‘hmm let’s see … ’,” Roura tells AFP.
“Then once they start playing, it’s difficult, right? Because imagine 20 kids of 7, 8 years old, all chasing the ball.
“Even so, Lamine would sometimes do something where you’d go, ‘Damn!’. Instead of just running after the ball, sometimes he would find space, wait, look for his left foot, execute really quickly.”
One attribute, honed on the square where if your feet aren’t fast enough to swerve defenders, you can end up on the concrete, marked out little Yamal.
“Dribbling might be the most innate technical action, right?” Roura says. “It’s hard to train a dribbler. He had that. He would feint, do things which made you say ‘wow’.
“We thought this kid had something special, even if he looked a bit slight, and decided to sign him.”
Negotiations with Yamal’s father Mounir Nasraoui, from Morocco, and his mother Sheila Ebana, from Equatorial Guinea, were quick.
He was a quiet, even shy child, who loved to play football and spent a lot of time with his paternal grandmother, Fatima Nasraoui.
She was the first of the family to move to Spain, arriving on a ferry from Tangier in 1990 and slowly bringing across her children in the following years.
Fatima Nasraoui settled in Rocafonda and remains there, although Mounir Nasraoui, after being stabbed during an altercation in 2024, has since relocated to the upmarket Barcelona neighbourhood of Sarria.
After Yamal’s parents split up when he was 3, he also lived with his mother in Roca del Valles, north of Mataro, but Rocafonda was always home.
Barcelona’s Fermin Lopez (left) celebrates with teammate Lamine Yamal after defeating Real Madrid and winning the La Liga title. Photo / Getty Images
It is represented in his goal celebration, using his hands to show the numbers 304, the last digits of the neighbourhood’s postcode.
Now, even in the more well-to-do parts of Mataro, the number appears.
Rocafonda is northeast of the elegant centre, a neighbourhood with a negative reputation for crime and poverty, although now it is famous for being where Yamal came from.
Glance down the right street and you can catch a narrow glimpse of sweet Mediterranean blue.
The winger and his father are spotted less frequently there now, but the games go on, with players duking it out in front of a mural of Yamal, painted in 2025.
“With all these great players … they’re capable of doing the same, or more than they did when they were children, and that’s very difficult, very rare, and that’s why they’re the chosen ones,” Roura says.
“[Yamal] enjoys playing, and I think that even when he was very little, when the challenge was greater, when a game was harder, that’s when he liked it the most, you know?”
‘No limits’
Not everyone has the accuracy of the neighbourhood’s “idol” and an “example” as youngsters sitting and waiting for a chance to play describe him.
The ball is lashed high over the fence that divides the concrete pitch from the road, to howls of frustration.
The kids call to a passer-by, before one player zips past on an electric scooter to retrieve it.
But for the interception, it may have rolled down the road and past the bar run by Yamal’s uncle, “Familia LY 304″, since he gave up his bakery.
Over the past three years, Abdul Nasraoui has answered plenty of questions about Yamal, but with concerns over the winger’s fitness heading into the World Cup, he doesn’t feel like speaking for now.
On a shelf behind the bar sits his replica trophy, Nasraoui’s dream, just three years after Yamal made his professional debut aged just 15, could come true remarkably quickly.
“When you see the resume he already has at 18, it’s scary, so what this kid can achieve has no limits,” Roura adds.
Yamal was still studying for his exams during Spain’s run to Euro 2024 glory, where he captured the world’s attention with a sensational strike against France.
That moment is memorialised on one wall of the bar, with others from the winger’s short yet glittering career for club and country, with two framed shirts.
Nearly three decades after arriving from Morocco, Nasraoui is still happy working. He sits and eats a few mouthfuls of vegetables before a shout comes from the kitchen and he is on his feet again, bringing dishes, olive oil and bread to customers.
“Ojala – I hope – ojala,” he says on the prospect of Yamal bringing the real thing back to Rocafonda. “If we win the World Cup, then I’ll talk.”
– AFP
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