“It gives me a really gratifying feeling to see these two kids playing for Spain at this Euros,” says Jonas Ramalho . “It’s really positive. People like me can identify with them and I know they are role models for others in our situation.
” The former Athletic Bilbao, Girona , and Malaga defender Ramalho is talking about watching young forwards Nico Williams and Lamine Yamal star for Spain at Euro 2024. Advertisement Ramalho, now 31, was born in Bilbao to a Spanish mother and an Angolan father in 1993. He captained Spain ’s under-17s to a European Championship final in 2010, was a squad member as the under-19s won the Euros in 2011, and played all five games when they won the under-19 trophy again in 2012.
In November 2011, he became the first Black player in Athletic Bilbao’s history, given a La Liga debut by Marcelo Bielsa at the age of 18. Current Athletic forward Williams was born in Pamplona in July 2002. Nine years previous to that, his Ghanaian parents Maria and Felix travelled overland, across the Sahara desert to the Spanish enclave of Melilla in north Africa, when Maria was pregnant with her first son Inaki (as the elder Williams sibling told The Athletic in an interview in 2022).
Barcelona forward Yamal’s father is from Morocco and his mother is from Equatorial Guinea. He was born in the Barcelona suburb of Esplugues de Llobregat in July 2007 and grew up in the majority-immigrant Rocafonda neighbourhood of the Catalan city of Mataro. GO DEEPER Lamin.
