By: Chioma Madonna Ndukwu
The Way We Live: Lamine Yamal Was Still a Boy When His Mother Saw the World in Him
“Are you going again?”
Lamine had barely dropped his football bag beside the door when Sheila asked the question.
“Yes.”
“You just came back.”
“I know.”
“And have you eaten?”
He paused.
Sheila looked at him.
“That is what I thought.”
He laughed, picked up the plate she had left on the table and began eating.
“After this, I’m going.”
“After you finish the food.”
“Yes.”
“All of it.”
He looked at the plate, then at his mother.
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
Those were the kinds of conversations that filled the years before Lamine Yamal became a name known across the world.
He was a boy who wanted to play football, and Sheila Ebana was his mother, the woman who still had to ask whether he had eaten before he went back to training.
Sheila had come to Spain from Equatorial Guinea. When Lamine was still very young, his parents separated, and she continued raising him as he grew up in Catalonia.
There were the ordinary responsibilities of raising a child, making a living and supporting a boy whose love for football kept becoming more serious.
“Are you still playing this football?” someone may have asked her at some point.
Many parents have heard some version of that question when their child’s dream is still uncertain. Nobody knows how far a child’s talent will take them when they are still young.
There is no guarantee that the dream will survive disappointment, injury, competition or the demands of growing up. Sometimes, all a parent knows is that the child keeps returning to the same thing. So the parent keeps making room.
Sheila’s story is part of what makes Lamine’s rise so compelling. The world eventually encountered his talent through football, but she encountered the child before talent became a public conversation. She knew the boy before millions of people learned his name.
At home, a footballer can still be the child who needs reminding to eat. A future champion can still leave things where they should not be left. A boy capable of making thousands of people rise from their seats can still have a mother asking whether he has finished his homework.
“Do you know what people say about you now?” someone might ask him today.
He might smile.
“My mother still tells me what to do.”
That is one of the strange things about success. It can change the way the world looks at a person without changing the way a parent sees the child who came home before the world began watching.
At 19, Lamine Yamal has already won the FIFA World Cup with Spain and established himself as one of the most remarkable young footballers in the world.
His rise has taken him from the football pitches of Catalonia to the biggest stages in the sport.
Yet his story also carries the experience of many families. There are parents who support children through years when talent is still only a possibility.
There are parents who worry about money, make difficult choices and continue encouraging a child without knowing whether the dream will ever become a career.
The writer James Baldwin once said, “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”
Children also notice the adults who remain present when the future is uncertain. They remember who keeps showing up, who takes their interests seriously and who encourages them when the world has not yet found a reason to pay attention.
Maya Angelou once wrote, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
Parents often raise children with what they have, doing the best they can with the opportunities, resources and circumstances available to them. Many hope that their children will one day have opportunities they themselves never had.
Sheila could not have known exactly where Lamine’s path would lead. She could not have looked at the little boy with a football and seen every trophy that would eventually come.
She could only see a child who loved the game and wanted to keep playing. Sometimes, that is all a parent has at the beginning: a child’s interest, a little hope and the decision to take the dream seriously.
Years later, when Lamine stands before packed stadiums and people celebrate what he can do, his mother may still remember those ordinary years.
She may remember asking him whether he had eaten, telling him to put his football away for a while and watching him return to the game as soon as he could.
The world knows the footballer now, but she knew the child long before his name became familiar to millions of people.
Perhaps, that is what makes a child’s success so deeply moving to the person who raised them. The achievement is not only the moment everyone finally notices. It is also the knowledge that the ordinary days, the days that seemed unimportant at the time, were part of the journey after all.
Personal Thoughts:
A child may become famous in a single season, but the people who helped shape that child usually spent years believing before there was anything to celebrate.
One Thing Worth Remembering:
Never assume that the small things you do for a child are insignificant. A future nobody can yet see may be growing inside the ordinary days you are helping them live.
Let’s Talk:
What is one thing someone believed about you before you were old enough to believe it about yourself?
Editor’s Note
This feature is based on publicly reported information about Lamine Yamal and his family. The dialogue and certain scenes are literary reconstruction and are not presented as verbatim accounts of private conversations or events. The story is a human-interest reflection on parenting, sacrifice and the dreams children carry.
