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Following a 2-1 victory over England, defending champions Argentina secured their place in the World Cup final against European champions Spain, setting up a generational showdown between Lionel Messi and Lamine Yamal.
Although Sunday’s final in New Jersey marks the first time the 39-year-old Argentine veteran and the 19-year-old Spanish winger will meet, it is not their first real meeting.
The duo’s history dates back almost two decades, when 20-year-old Messi first crossed paths with a baby Yamal during a charity promotional photo shoot in Barcelona.
In late 2007, in a charity raffle organized by the Spanish sports newspaper Diario Sport and the United Nations Children’s Fund, known as UNICEF, Yamal’s family won a spot in a promotional photo shoot with a young Lionel Messi.
The raffle offered local families in Catalonia the opportunity to participate in a promotional calendar photo shoot with professional soccer players from FC Barcelona. The family of Lamine Yamal, who was only six months old at the time, won one of the places in the lottery.
The resulting photo session took place inside the Camp Nou locker room. Twenty-year-old Lionel Messi, who was then establishing himself as a key Barcelona player, was paired with infantryman Lamine Yamal.
The photo shoot included Messi holding Yamal in a blue plastic baby bathtub. At the time of filming, the participants had no connection other than the raffle, and the images were archived after their publication in the 2008 charity calendar.
A photo from the shoot went viral after Yamal’s father Mounir Nasraoui posted it on Instagram, along with the caption: “The beginning of two legends” after the Euro 2024 championship.
Almost 20 years after that photo shoot, the baby in the photo and the legend himself are destined to face off on the international stage.
The connection between the two athletes extends beyond their shared history in Barcelona and will now reach the sport’s biggest stage, the World Cup final.
