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Lamine Yamal helped Spain win the European Championships in 2024 at age 16. He scored in the semifinal against France and assisted the opening goal in the final. He was the youngest goalscorer in Euros history and walked away with the tournament’s Young Player Award.
Two years later, Yamal has made it to his first World Cup. He scored Spain’s opening goal against Saudi Arabia, becoming only the second player aged 18 or younger to score the opening goal in a World Cup match since Brazil’s Pelé in 1958.
At the club level, Yamal plays for FC Barcelona, where he was scouted at age six and grew up through the youth academy. He grew up in Rocafonda, a working-class neighborhood in the Spanish town of Mataró, roughly 20 miles northeast of Barcelona. Below, get to know Lamine Yamal’s parents, Mounir Nasraoui and Sheila Ebana.
Meet Lamine’s mom, Sheila Ebana
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Ebana at an FC Barcelona match against Real Oviedo in January.
Yamal’s mother, Sheila Ebana, is originally from Bata, Equatorial Guinea. She moved to Catalonia, where she worked in hospitality as a waitress. She and Yamal’s father, Mounir Nasraoui, separated when Yamal was around three years old. After the split, she moved to Granollers, Spain with her son, while Nasraoui remained in Mataró, Spain. Yamal alternated between both cities to spend time with each parent.
Ebana worked long hours, and Yamal has spoken openly about how little time they had together during his childhood. In an interview on the Resonancia de Corazon podcast with José Ramón de la Morena, he described his daily routine: “I went to school, came back, went to training, and saw my mother at night, when she came back from training.”
Despite the long days, she made sure he was fed when she got home. “My mother couldn’t be with me much because of work, but she always made me dinner when she came home at night,” he said on the podcast.
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Yamal with his mother after winning the 2024 Euros.
Yamal has since bought her a home in Esplugues de Llobregat, an affluent section of Barcelona. Coincidentally, it used to be the home of another famous footballer who played for FC Barcelona: Gerard Pique, who lived their with then-partner Shakira for a decade. “I bought her a house wherever she chose; she’s my queen, she deserves everything, and that’s what I want most in this world,” he said in the same interview. Yamal also bought homes for his paternal grandmother and father.
Meet Lamine’s dad, Mounir Nasraoui
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Nasraoui after the Spanish Copa del Rey match between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona in April 2025.
Mounir Nasraoui, Yamal’s father, is from Larache, Morocco. Nasraoui did not arrive in Spain alone. In the same Resonancia de Corazon interview, Yamal described how his family made it to Mataró: “The first to arrive was my grandmother, who sneaked onto the bus from Morocco and managed to get to Mataró. She started working three shifts so my father could come because he stayed in Morocco, and when my grandmother made some money, she paid a woman to bring my father and his sister, who came when they were three.”
Nasraoui worked blue-collar jobs in Spain while Yamal was growing up. When Yamal chose to represent Spain rather than Morocco, where he was also eligible given his father’s heritage, it caused a bit of a controversy. A documentary produced by Spanish sports tabloid MARCA, Forged: Cradle of Champions, included accounts from people in Rocafonda who said Nasraoui “had to endure many insults from Moroccans for choosing Spain.”
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Yamal posing with his father after the 2024 Euros.
Albert Luque, a former director of football with the Spanish national team, described the pressure surrounding that decision on the program El Larguero in March 2025. “It wasn’t an easy case. The Morocco coach came expressly [to Lamine’s entourage] and the Moroccan government tried to convince him,” Luque said. “And when we spoke to him he told me: ‘I want to be European champion, they are pressuring me from all sides but I want to play with Spain.’”
Luque added that Nasraoui conveyed the personal cost of that choice. “The father was more complicated. He told me that in Morocco they were going to kill him. He told me some things that it is better not to talk about,” Luque said. In August 2024, Nasraoui was reportedly stabbed in a car park in Mataró, but the motivation for the attack was unknown. His injuries were said to be minor. Police arrested four people in connection with the attack.
Rachel King (she/her) is a news writer at Town & Country. Before joining T&C, she spent nearly a decade as an editor at Fortune. Her work covering travel and lifestyle has appeared in Forbes, Observer, Robb Report, Cruise Critic, and Cool Hunting, among others. Originally from San Francisco, she lives in New York with her wife, their daughter, and a precocious labradoodle. Follow her on Instagram at @rk.passport.