Lamine Yamal's humble beginnings, dream run at Barcelona and the Morocco connection

It was when Lamine Yamal’s number came up that things turned ominous for Barcelona. They led Paris Saint-Germain by two goals on aggregate in their Uefa Champions League quarter-final. With barely half-an-hour gone of the second, home leg, they went down to 10 men, defender Ronald Araujo sent off. In the rejig of resources, the most junior player on the pitch was substituted, sacrificed.

The substitution was hard luck on the kid who had just set up Barcelona’s early goal; the kid who, six days earlier, with a cross elegantly curved off the outside of his magical left foot, created Barca’s opening goal in the Paris leg. Without Yamal, Barcelona would lose momentum – 1-0 up became a 4-1 defeat on Tuesday night, PSG through to the semis 6-4 on aggregate.

So there will be no 16-year-old in the Champions League final, no fairytale climax to a season where Lamine Yamal Nasraoui Ebana has been setting new records for precociousness almost by the week.

Whenever a new record number comes up – youngest Barcelona debutant since the 1940s, at 15; the club’s youngest ever goalscorer, at 16 and two months – Yamal ensures those who know him best are reminded of the number that means home.

His celebratory gesture is becoming a trademark: Forearms crossed, thumb and index finger of his left hand forming an ‘0’, the other three fingers pointing upwards and, with his right hand, all four fingers raised. It’s a message: 3-0-4. It references the postcode of where he grew up, Rocafonda, uphill and inland on Catalonia’s Maresme coast, on the edge of the city of Mataro.

Make your way, as The National did last week, to postcode 08304 – all the codes in around Barcelona start with 08 – and you see Yamal’s pride in his locale being shared by that