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In 2007, 20-year-old Lionel Messi posed for a Barcelona charity calendar, gently bathing a baby in a plastic bathtub. The baby’s family had won a UNICEF raffle. No one thought about the photo again for 17 years.
The baby was Lamine Yamal.
You could write fiction for a decade and never get there. On Sunday, at the World Cup final in New Jersey, the greatest player of all time faces the teenager many believe will inherit the title, and there is photographic evidence that Messi literally held it first. They both arrived through La Masia. They both wore number 19 in Barcelona before switching to number 10. The football gods stopped being subtle a long time ago.
In some ways, the two teams are as compelling as the two stars.
Let’s start with the story, because there is hardly any. Spain and Argentina have met once in a World Cup, a 1966 group stage match that Argentina won 2-1 with a double from Luis Artime. They have never faced each other in a knockout match. The all-time series is deadlocked at six wins each. This year’s Finalissima was supposed to settle things in March before it was cancelled, so the reigning European and South American champions will meet for the first time in the history of a World Cup final, with the sport’s biggest trophy on the table. Good. That works too.
The paths couldn’t look more different. Spain dismantled France 2-0, making the most feared attack of the tournament look normal. This is the best possession team in the world and, more importantly, the team with the clearest identity in the sport. In an era where so many teams push and build in the same way, Spain still looks unmistakably like Spain. That’s worth something in a single final.
And the names driving it are not the ones anyone predicted. Yamal has one goal in the entire tournament, scored on the second day, which would have sounded like a crisis in May and instead describes a finalist. Mikel Oyarzabal leads the team in goals and buried the penalty that broke France. Rodri once again looked like the 2024 Ballon d’Or winner, doing business in midfield. Behind him, the wall: Pau Cubarsí and Aymeric Laporte have conceded a goal in seven games, Unai Simón set a record for clean sheets in the World Cup and the full-backs have been a cheat code at both ends. Marc Cucurella erased Kylian Mbappé for 90 minutes, while Pedro Porro put the nail in the coffin.
Argentina, meanwhile, has stumbled in the round of 16 like a heavyweight that keeps getting up: 3-2 over Cape Verde, 3-2 over Egypt, 3-1 over Switzerland in extra time and now 2-1 over England after trailing in the 85th minute. No team had ever scored multiple winners in added time in a single World Cup. Argentina now has it. At some point, “lucky” stops being the word and “inevitable” takes over.
The engine of the Albiceleste is 39 years old. Messi assisted on both goals against England, scored eight goals in the tournament and continues to rewrite the record books on a weekly basis. His legs have aged. Not his brain.
And Argentina showed England exactly what Spain should expect. The first 30 minutes in Atlanta were a street fight: eight fouls and zero shots on goal in the first hydration break, bodies falling everywhere and rhythm nowhere to be found. Thomas Tuchel’s England took a 55th-minute lead through Anthony Gordon and then stood still, inviting wave after wave until the dam broke. Enzo Fernández scored from distance. Lautaro Martínez headed the winning goal in added time after a fantastic right-footed cross from Messi.
Tuchel has been criticized for his second-half tactics, and rightly so, but here’s the warning for Sunday: Argentina will try to drag Spain down the same alley.
That’s the whole finale, really. Spain wants a match of order. Argentina wants a game of chaos. One team has conceded only one goal. The other refuses to die.
And in the midst of all this, a man and the baby he once bathed, reunited with the world watching.
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