By the time he turned 19, Messi had scored 11 goals in his career and had won La Liga and the UEFA Champions League once each.

Lamine Yamal, who turned 19 on Monday, has already scored a whopping 56 goals and won the League three times and the Copa del Rey once, as well as Euro 2024.

Yamal is not actually the player’s last name, but rather the second of his two names.

His full name is Lamine Yamal Naraoui Ebana, and he wears the first two on the back of his shirts for both Barcelona and Spain as a tribute to two people who helped his family around the time of his birth.

It has been widely reported in the Spanish media that Lamine Yamal’s father promised to name him after two friends who helped the family financially, helping them pay their bills at a time when money was scarce.

Lamine is a common Arabic male name, which can be translated into English as honest or trustworthy, while Yamal is a variant of Jamal, meaning elegance or beauty.

He grew up in Rocafonda, a working-class neighborhood in Mataró, 32 kilometers north of Barcelona.

The area was built in the 1960s to house immigrants from other regions of Spain, and as they began to move to more affluent areas, immigrants from other countries arrived in the 1990s.

Lamine Yamal has celebrated some of his goals by making the 3-0-4 gesture with his fingers, in reference to the Rocafonda postal code.

“What my mother has done, what my father has done, I couldn’t have done it for anyone other than my son,” Yamal told El País at the beginning of the tournament.

“If you don’t have money, it’s very difficult to help your son play football. And my parents made all that happen. It’s something I can never repay them for.”