While most teenagers were stressed about exams in a classroom last summer, Lamine Yamal was doing his homework between training sessions at Euro 2024. That detail alone tells you everything about what kind of person Barcelona have on their hands.
The short answer to whether Yamal still goes to school: no. He completed Spain's compulsory secondary education — the ESO, typically finished at 16 — and that chapter is closed. What made it unusual was how he finished it.
Homework at a major tournament
ESPN Originals' documentary series Destiny On The Line captured Yamal studying remotely from Germany throughout Euro 2024. His teachers sent work. He did it. In between preparing for knockout-round football against the best national teams in Europe.
He even joked about it — homework between training sessions and games. That's not spin or a PR-friendly anecdote. That's a 16-year-old managing two completely different sets of obligations at the same time, at the highest level of both.
La Masia had already built the framework for this. Barcelona's academy has long integrated formal education into elite training schedules, so Yamal wasn't navigating that balance alone. The system was designed for exactly this kind of situation.
What comes after school
There's no indication Yamal is pursuing further formal education now. At 17 — still a teenager at the time of writing — his entire focus is Barcelona and Spain. Training, traveling, playing. The academic chapter ended when it was supposed to.
What's left is a player who, before turning 20, has already featured at a European Championship and a World Cup, finished compulsory schooling remotely from a tournament hotel in Germany, and become one of the most-watched wingers on the planet. The grades are in. The football career is just getting started.
