Lamine Yamal insists on grandmother being present for Barcelona signing photos | Football

Lamine Yamal, Barcelona and Spain’s soccer sensation, has delayed the official photoshoot for the signing of his new membership contract in order that his grandmother will be current.

The 17-year-old, who has received hearts and minds not simply along with his expertise on the pitch however for his humility, credit Fatima, his paternal grandmother, with holding his ft on the bottom after his mother and father separated when he was three years outdated.

Barcelona introduced on Tuesday that Lamine Yamal had signed a brand new contract within the presence of the membership president, Joan Laporta, and sporting director Deco. The deal retains him on the membership till 2031, when he’ll nonetheless be solely 24, and has a buyout clause of €1bn (£840m).

Nevertheless, the official photograph session for the signing was postponed till July, when Lamine Yamal turns 18, as a result of Fatima was unable to attend on Tuesday.

Fatima left Morocco in 1990 and arrived in Barcelona accompanied by her 5 youngsters, amongst them Lamine Yamal’s father, Mounir Nasraoui. She performed a key position in Lamine Yamal’s upbringing after his mom, Sheila Ebana, from Equatorial Guinea, and Nasraoui separated.

When Lamine Yamal supplied to purchase Fatima a home she refused, saying she most well-liked to remain the place she was in Rocafonda, the working-class neighbourhood in Mataró, a coastal city north of Barcelona.

True to his origins, Lamine Yamal celebrates his targets along with his fingers forming the numbers 304, the Rocafonda postal code.

Already rated by many pundits as the perfect participant on this planet, he signed for Barcelona in 2014 when he was six years outdated, and was raised in La Masia, the membership’s well-known school-cum-football academy. He made his first-team debut in 2023.

On the Uefa European Championship final yr he turned the youngest participant to look within the competitors, scoring the objective of the event towards France within the semi-finals.

Throughout the competitors, which was held in Germany, Spain’s use of their younger star was constrained by native labour legal guidelines that forbid anybody beneath 18 to work after 8pm.

Final yr Lamine Yamal turned the youngest participant to be nominated for the coveted Ballon d’Or, successful the Kopa Trophy for greatest younger participant. At 16 he broke the file held by his Barcelona teammate Gavi as Spain’s youngest goalscorer.