The father of the young Barcelona star Lamine Yamal was stabbed and is hospitalized in serious condition

Lamine Yamal He is one of the emerging stars of Spanish football. With the shirt of Barcelona It is destined to give you many joys and it has already begun to do so in the Spain national teamwith which he was champion of the last Euro Cup. This Wednesday, the Catalan city suffered a shock with the news that the father of footballer Mounir Nasraoui was stabbed and remained hospitalized “in serious condition, but not life-threatening”.

The episode occurred at night in a parking lot in Mataró, where according to several Spanish media – including The Vanguard y Sportwho gave the first information – Nasraoui – born in Morocco – received several stab wounds which forced his transfer to the Can Ruti hospital.

The local Mossos d’Esquadra contacted several witnesses who witnessed the events to open the relevant investigations. According to this medium, the events could correspond to a ‘settling of accounts’ for a fight that occurred a few hours before, for which there are no details about the reasons.

The diary The VanguardHe even indicated that up to eight police vehicles arrived at the scene of the incident, and that thanks to the contributions of witnesses they were able to find three of the four alleged perpetrators of the attack.

Some videos that emerged on social networks about the initial conflict showed Nasraoui arguing at the door of a house, while wearing an alternative Barcelona shirt with his son’s number and surname. From there, he had to be removed by the Police.

The 17-year-old wonder boy, who in July went viral for a photo in which he is seen as a baby being bathed by Lionel Messi, is the son of an Equatorial Guinean and a Moroccan, he grew up in Rocafonda – a neighborhood defined by VOX as one of the “multicultural dunghills” – and was chosen as the best young player of the Euro Cup, after the 2-1 win over England in the final.

Lamine Yamal Nasraoui Ebana celebrated his 17th birthday a day before that decisive match. And she does a lot of things that teenagers her age do. She smiles and shows off the braces that cover her upper teeth. She posts videos on TikTok with her partner and friend Nico Williamswho turned 22. He plays PlayStation at the national team’s camp. He also studies there, since he is still studying, remotely, his fourth and final year of high school. And with that audacity of youth he has emerged as one of the figures of LaLiga de España for the season that begins next weekend.

That walking at the wrong time has been part of his life for a long time. In the Barcelona quarry he played in the Cadet category when he was a child. From there he went almost immediately to Youth and in September 2022, at the age of 15 and without going through Barça Atlètic (the reserve team), he joined the senior squad. Seven months later, on April 29, 2023, Xavi Hernández made his debut in a 4-0 victory over Betis for the 32nd round of the Spanish League (he entered for Gavi). At 15 years and 290 days old, he became the youngest footballer to represent the Blaugrana first team.

From then on, records followed one another. With Barça, he was also the youngest to play a game as a starter, to win a League title and to score a goal. He was also the youngest to play in a Champions League match, and to play and score for the Spanish national team. In this Euro, he broke the precocity marks in playing a match (at 16 years and 338 days against Croatia on June 15) and in shouting a goal (on Tuesday against France at 16 years and 362 days). He also surpassed Pelé’s record (17 years and 244 days in 1958) as the youngest footballer to play in a World Cup or European Championship semi-final. And now he is also the earliest champion.

And on this whole staircase, he never seemed to get dizzy. How did she do it? Óscar López, his coach at Barcelona’s Juvenil A, rehearsed an explanation on Tuesday. “The move from Cadet to Youth was very good for him. He was a 15-year-old boy who competed in the Youth League (the youth Champions League) against 20-year-old players. His teammates made him see that if after a loss of the ball he didn’t run back, they were going to throw him out. row; that if he didn’t finish a play first and chose to make two or three controls and lost the ball, he was hurting them. That adaptation process of two or three months did him very well for this abysmal change that he had to face now: going to a Euro Cup,” he explained.

He joined the Pre-Benjamín category of Barcelona’s training divisions when he was six years old and after the club’s recruiters saw him playing at the La Torreta club in La Roca del Vallés, on the outskirts of Granollers. There the boy became an elite footballer in a decade. “The Masía is everything. He has helped me in all aspects: in my education, as a person and as a footballer,” he highlighted last May in an interview published in Barça’s official magazine.

The most important club in Catalonia is one of the spaces that Lamine Yamal claims with pride. The other is Rocafonda, the neighborhood of the city of Mataró where she spent a good part of her life and where her friends and part of her family reside. It is also the neighborhood that, thanks to him, his devilish dribbles and her goals, has earned a reason for positive evaluation among part of the Spanish population, while another portion observes it with suspicion and distrust.

The juvenile was born on July 13, 2007 in Esplugues de Llobregat, where his parents, a migrant couple, lived at the time: Mounir Nasraoui, Moroccan, and Sheila Ebana, Equatorial Guinean. When the couple separated, Lamine moved to Granollers with her mother, but then settled in Rocafonda with her father and Fátima, her paternal grandmother, who was largely in charge of raising the boy. From there he traveled 30 kilometers every day to Barcelona to train, before settling in La Masía.

“I carry my neighborhood inside. “It is an honor to show the world where I am from,” said Lamine, who usually celebrates goals with a gesture he devised with his cousin and a friend: with his arms crossed over his chest, he extends his little finger, ring finger and middle finger. left hand, forms a circle with the index finger and thumb, and extends the little finger, the ring finger, the big finger and the right index finger. Three hundred four. Those are the last three digits of the Rocafonda zip code (08304). That number is also stamped on their boots along with the flags of Morocco and Equatorial Guinea.

But just as he praises it every time he can, others despise that neighborhood in which around 15,000 people live, which has a high percentage of migrant population and which is among the poorest 24% in Spain, according to the latest household income distribution report published by the National Institute of Statistics of that country in October 2023. Rocafonda is one of the “multicultural dunghills,” according to the definition of Rocío de Meer, VOX deputy for the province of Almería, who used that expression in August 2020, during a parliamentary presentation, to refer to the neighborhoods of different Spanish cities in which there was a significant presence of migrants.

Between VOX and Lamine Yamal’s family there is a story of very little love. On May 16, 2023, the player’s father was involved in an altercation with members of that party who were distributing leaflets in Rocafonda as part of the campaign for the municipal elections that were going to be held on the 28th of that month. Along with four other people, Mounir Nasraoui insulted the militants of the far-right force, threw eggs at the gazebo under which they were and struggled with one of them.

The altercation initially ended when a group of Mossos d’Esquadra (the Catalan regional police) dispersed the protesters. That day, when reconstructing the event on her Twitter account, Mónica Lora, VOX deputy in the Parliament of Catalonia and candidate for mayor of Mataró, defined Rocafonda as “a nest of criminals where they want to impose their law.”

The conflict did not end there, since eight days later Nasraoui was subjected to a brief trial for the crimes of damage and mistreatment of work. On June 13, the Investigative Court number 3 of Mataró sentenced him to pay a fine of 550 euros and compensation of 110 euros to the militant with whom he had struggled. The event took on a greater dimension than it deserved because the protagonist was the footballer’s father.

The dazzling presence of Lamine Yamal in the Spanish team and the vindication of his family origins and his neighborhood have put those who hold xenophobic positions in that country in an uncomfortable situation. This Wednesday, Manuel Gavira, VOX spokesperson in the Parliament of Andalusia, was consulted about the striker’s goal against France.

“Of course I enjoyed Lamine Yamal’s goal. I loved it. And what is the problem? If Lamine Yamal hadn’t been there, maybe someone else would have put him in. But Lamine Yamal plays for Spain and I’m glad,” reasoned the leader, who a few minutes earlier had rejected the Andalusian Government’s willingness to welcome migrant minors, some of the same age as the Barcelona soccer player, who arrive in that community. from the Canary Islands. “The consequence is the insecurity and fear that our women go through because we are talking about a culture that is incompatible with ours,” he had assured.