Lionel Messi will play Lamine Yamal in World Cup final 19 years after viral baby photo

Lionel Messi will play Lamine Yamal in World Cup final 19 years after viral baby photo

Spain and Argentina will face off in the 2026 FIFA World Cup final on Sunday

One is considered by many to be the greatest soccer player of all time. The other, a prodigy thought to be soccer's next megastar.

Nearly 20 years ago, the former gave the latter a little bubble bath, complete with a rubber duckie.

Argentina's Lionel Messi, now 39, took photos for a charity calendar with Spain's Lamine Yamal, now 19, when Yamal was just a few months old. The two will face off against each other for the first time in Sunday's FIFA World Cup final.

"It is a true miracle of destiny," Joan Monfort, the photographer who captured the photos as part of an annual charity drive for UNICEF, told BBC Sport Thursday.

The photo shoot took place in the visitors' locker room at Barcelona's Camp Nou in the autumn of 2007, Monfort previously told The Associated Press.

Barcelona players posed with children and their families for a calendar as part of an annual charity drive by local newspaper Diario Sport and UNICEF. Monfort was in charge of the photo shoots — and it just so happened that Messi was paired with Yamal's family.

Photo of young Lionel Messi with Lamine Yamal as a baby goes viral

Yamal's mother, who is from Equatorial Guinea, is next to Messi and baby Lamine in one of the photos.

The photos resurfaced in 2024 after Yamal's father posted them on Instagram with the text "the beginning of two legends."

This was right around the time Yamal, 16 at the time, was making headlines for his breakout performance at the European Championship, becoming the youngest to ever score at the men's tournament.

He was already the youngest player to debut, score and assist in the league after making his debut with Barcelona FC at 15.

When the photos emerged, some fans said Yamal had been "blessed" by Messi. Yamal's father, Mounir Nasraoui, joked at the time that it was actually the opposite.

"Maybe it was Lamine who blessed Messi," he told Spanish newspaper Mundo Deportivo.

Messi was awkward in photoshoot

The 2007 photoshoot wasn't an easy assignment, Monfort recalled. Messi wasn't sure how to interact with baby Lamine, who was in a plastic tub for the shoot, he told The Associated Press.

"Messi is a pretty introverted guy. He's shy," Monfort said. "He was coming out of the locker room and suddenly he finds himself in another locker room with a plastic tub full of water and a baby in it. It was complicated. He didn't even know how to hold him, at first.”

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Messi was 20 at the time and already considered a big talent, but it would take a couple of years before he began to establish his reputation as the most outstanding player of his generation for Barcelona and Argentina.

On Wednesday, Messi assisted on goals by Enzo Fernandez in the 85th minute and Lautaro Martinez in the second minute of injury time to give Argentina a wild 2-1 victory over England and a spot in the World Cup final against Spain.

On Tuesday, the Spanish team managed a record sixth shutout in seven games so far, winning 2-0 in the semifinals against France.

A day after his 19th birthday, Yamal was denied a goal on a close offside call. But it was Yamal's smart play against a veteran defender that gave Spain the early lead.

On Sunday, the two will face off against each other. It's their first ever meeting on the pitch — but clearly not their first-ever encounter. This time, though, there will perhaps be fewer bubbles.

Natalie Stechyson has been a writer and editor at CBC News since 2021. She covers stories on social trends, families, gender, human interest, as well as general news. She's worked as a journalist since 2009, with stints at the Globe and Mail and Postmedia News, among others. Before joining CBC News, she was the parents editor at HuffPost Canada, where she won a silver Canadian Online Publishing Award for her work on pregnancy loss. You can reach her at natalie.stechyson@cbc.ca.

With files from the Associated Press