There’s a photo that’s been floating around the internet for a couple years now. Lionel Messi, then a 20-year-old rising star at Barcelona, holding a baby in a plastic tub. The baby is Lamine Yamal. That kid is now 19, and on Sunday he’ll line up against Messi in the World Cup final.
Argentina punched its ticket by rallying past England in a wild semifinal. Spain got there by dismantling France. The matchup itself is loaded — defending champions against the team that’s looked like the most complete in the tournament. But the backstory between Messi and Yamal gives this one an extra layer that’s hard to ignore.
How a raffle turned into an iconic photo
The photo wasn’t staged for some big ad campaign. It came from a charity calendar put together by Diario Sport and UNICEF in 2007. Families in the Roca Fonda neighborhood of Mataró could enter a raffle for a chance to get a picture taken at Camp Nou with a Barcelona player. Yamal’s family won.
Photographer Joan Monfort told the Associated Press how it went down. Messi came out of the locker room and walked into another room where there was a plastic tub filled with water and a baby inside. He had no idea what to do. Monfort said Messi is pretty introverted and shy, and he didn’t even know how to hold the kid at first. There’s a shot of Messi with this slightly uncertain look on his face, one hand under the baby, one hand awkwardly off to the side. Yamal’s mother, Sheila Ebana, is in a couple of the frames too.
That photo resurfaced during the 2024 Euros when Yamal’s father posted it on Instagram. By then, Yamal was already Barcelona’s next big thing, a left-footed winger out of La Masia just like Messi before him. He went on to win Euro 2024 and was Spain’s best attacking player in that tournament. Now he’s the focal point of a World Cup team that hasn’t lost a game in more than a year.
Two left feet, one massive game
Both players are left-footed. Both came through Barcelona’s academy system. Both have that low center of gravity and the ability to make defenders look foolish in tight spaces. But that’s where the direct comparisons stop for now. Messi is 38 and playing in his last World Cup, trying to win back-to-back titles and cement a legacy that doesn’t need any more cementing. Yamal is a teenager who’s already done more than most players do in a career, and he’s just getting started.
Sunday’s final at MetLife Stadium is the kind of generational passing-of-the-torch story that sports fans eat up. But nobody’s writing the ending before the game is played. Spain has been the best team in the world over the last two years. Argentina has the best player in the world history. And somewhere in the middle of all that is a photo of two guys in a bathtub that now feels like a time capsule nobody knew they were making.
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