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‘Looking at this photo is crazy’: Lionel Messi amazed as life comes full circle against Lamine Yamal in World Cup final
Lionel Messi marvelled at life coming full circle as he prepares to face Lamine Yamal in the World Cup final, nearly 19 years after once holding him as a baby.
Lionel Messi described his now-iconic photograph with a baby Lamine Yamal as “crazy” as the two Barcelona generations prepared to meet on opposite sides in the FIFA World Cup 2026 final.
Messi’s defending champions Argentina face European champions Spain at the New York New Jersey Stadium on Sunday, with the 39-year-old seeking to lift the World Cup for a second successive edition. Standing between him and another historic triumph will be 19-year-old Yamal, the player widely considered the brightest star of football’s next generation.
Their meeting carries an extraordinary backstory. Nearly 19 years before the final, a 20-year-old Messi was photographed holding and bathing an infant Yamal during a charity calendar shoot at Barcelona’s Camp Nou.
Asked by NFL great Tom Brady what the photograph meant to him ahead of their World Cup meeting, Messi expressed his admiration for the Spain forward while making it clear that Argentina would attempt to prevent him from completing a historic triumph.
“Lamine is an amazing player. I follow him closely because he plays for a club I love, and I always wish him the best and want the best for him,” Messi said through an interpreter at Fanatics Fest in New York.
“He is one of the world’s leading stars at 19. He has his whole career ahead of him, and it’s a great opportunity to achieve something historic, which we will try our best to ensure doesn’t happen. But yeah, I wish him the best, honestly. Looking at this photo is crazy, and that’s life, right? I took a photo with him when he was a baby, and today we’re both facing each other in the World Cup.”
When Lionel Messi held baby Lamine Yamal
The photographs were taken by Joan Monfort on October 31, 2007, when Yamal was only around three-and-a-half months old. Messi, then 20, had already established himself as one of Barcelona’s most exciting talents but was still two years away from winning the first of his eight Ballon d’Or awards.
The shoot was organised for a charity calendar involving Barcelona, UNICEF and the
Spanish newspaper Sport. Families from the Catalan town of Mataró entered a raffle for the opportunity to have their children photographed alongside Barcelona players.
Yamal’s family was selected, and the infant was randomly paired with Messi inside the away dressing room at Camp Nou. One of the most recognisable pictures shows Messi helping Yamal’s mother, Sheila Ebana, bathe her son in a small plastic tub. Another captures Messi holding the baby wrapped in a towel.
The photographs remained largely forgotten until Yamal’s father, Mounir Nasraoui, shared one during Euro 2024 with the caption: “The beginning of two legends.” The image quickly went viral as Yamal helped Spain win the European Championship.
It was frequently described then as a photograph taken 17 years earlier. By the time Messi and Yamal walk onto the field for the 2026 World Cup final, however, almost 19 years will have passed.
What began as a random charity-calendar assignment has consequently become the defining image of Sunday’s generational confrontation: Messi, approaching the end of an extraordinary career, facing the baby he once held, now attempting to take the World Cup from his hands
