Lamine Yamal’s emotional tribute to his mother despite childhood struggles

Lamine Yamal has just lifted the FIFA World Cup at 19. He celebrated with a postal code gesture, the number 304 flashed to a global audience, a quiet nod to Rocafonda, the working-class Mataró neighbourhood that raised him. Behind that celebration sits a story most football coverage has barely scratched. His mother, Sheila Ebana, had him at 16, raised him in a flat where the bedroom and kitchen shared the same walls, and worked restaurant shifts to buy him a PlayStation she could barely afford. Yamal has not forgotten a single detail.Why does Lamine Yamal say he has nothing to blame his mother for despite a difficult childhood?Sheila Ebana emigrated from Bata, Equatorial Guinea to Catalonia as a teenager. She became a mother at 16 while still figuring out life in a country that was not her own.