Lamine Yamal says he has been on the receiving end of racism "a thousand times", and that most of the people doing it have no idea they are doing it.
The Barcelona winger, who turned 19 this summer and helped Spain win the World Cup in July, was speaking to Spanish broadcaster Movistar.
"A thousand times," he said when asked how often he had encountered it. "People are indirectly racist toward you, but maybe don't realise it. There are a lot of comments or looks that are racist and they don't even notice."
What he said about being called Black
Yamal drew a line between description and insult.
"If someone calls me Black, it's not going to bother me at all, ultimately I'm Black, I'm not any other colour," he said. "Another thing is whether it's good or bad, whether they're saying it to offend me."
He added: "But if I'm playing a match and they paid for a ticket to see me, I'm not going to get angry just because they disrespected me."
The wider picture in Spanish football
This is not an abstract topic for him. The Spanish Observatory on Racism and Xenophobia, a government agency, reported earlier this year that Yamal and Real Madrid winger Vinicius Jr were the two most frequent targets of online racist abuse in Spain during the final quarter of 2025.
Yamal was also among the Barcelona players abused during the Clasico at the Bernabeu in October 2024.
He made his Barcelona debut at 15 and has won La Liga three times since. The abuse, by his own account, arrived alongside the trophies.
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