It is inexplicable, really. As if Michael Jordan had bathed the baby LeBron James or Rafa Nadal had bathed Carlos Alcaraz. The photograph of a twenty-something Leo Messi holding the newborn Lamine Yamal is circulating on all the phones around the world these days. It came to light in 2024 thanks to the father of the Spanish forward, who posted it on social media, but it is now, a day before the World Cup final between Spain and Argentina, that it reaches another dimension. “Many say it’s a conspiracy!” shouts the famous American host Jimmy Fallon on New York television as this text is being written. It’s hard not to agree with him.
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“I see that photo and it’s crazy. I took a photo with him when he was a baby and now that we are facing each other in a World Cup is crazy. I wish him good luck because his good is the good of Barcelona,” Messi said this Friday in New York.
It turns out that Lamine and Messi will play the final this Sunday, the 19th. The Spaniard will do so at 19 years old and with the number 19 on his back, the same number the Argentine wore in October 2007, when the photo was taken. If you want to twist it even more, the first two letters of the names and surname of ‘Lionel Andrés Messi‘ form, in descending order, the name ‘Lamine’: L, A, M, I, N, E. Believe what you want.
“I thought it was AI, it’s Messi bathing Lamine. It’s quite incredible!” says Zoran Mamdani, mayor of New York, now on television. The image has gone viral worldwide.
“19 years ago, a baby named Lamine Yamal and his mother, Sheila, met Lionel Messi during a photo session organized as part of a fundraiser for UNICEF,” the NGO states in a press release.
Sheila and Mounir, Lamine’s father, were part of the projects UNICEF had in the Rocafonda area, the neighborhood of Mataró where they lived, and they signed up for the raffle to participate in the charity calendar that the organization made in collaboration with Diario Sport and the Barcelona Foundation. The prize was to appear in a photo with a player from the Barça team. They won, and on Wednesday October 31, at three months old, baby Lamine entered Camp Nou for the first time, specifically the visitors’ locker room, the exact place where the meeting took place. He could have been with any of the footballers chosen for the campaign, Ronaldinho, Henry, Xavi, Iniesta, Puyol, Valdés, Eto’o, Deco, Abidal, Bojan… But fate wanted it to be Messi.
4.50 euros
“It’s a miracle,” said Joan Monfort, the author of the image. “Messi was even shyer and more introverted than now,” he adds. Messi and Lamine were chosen for the January photo, ahead of Valdés or Eto’o, in a calendar that was worth 4.50 euros at the time. Now, with the weight of history, its price would multiply. Monfort took the bathtub and rubber duck from his daughter Jana, and Messi held in his arms the boy against whom he will play to win or not the World Cup 19 years later.
They had never faced each other and probably never will again. They have been close at La Masía, while one climbed the youth ranks and the other won collective and individual awards, and there is some meeting in the club or press archives, but nothing like the first. When Messi left Barça in August 2021, Lamine was only 14 years old. He stood out in the Barça youth system, but had not yet appeared for the first team.
Lamine did not watch the Qatar final
In fact, the young footballer could not watch the Qatar World Cup final live that crowned Messi because that day, at the same time, he played a match with Barça’s Juvenil A. The Argentina-France World Cup match started at 16:00 on December 18, and the Barcelona-San Francisco match of the Catalan Honor Division at 16:30. The culés won 3-0 with Yamal playing the entire match, and when it ended he only had time to see how Messi celebrated his first World Cup.
Less than four years later, Lamine has traded a youth match for the World Cup final. He does it with Spain’s ’19’, the number Messi wore when he debuted with Argentina in a World Cup, and Barça’s ‘10‘, owned by Leo for years, now on his back and with the possibility of breaking records. If Spain becomes champion, the young man from Rocafonda will become the fourth youngest player to win a World Cup after Pelé, Ronaldo, and the Italian Bergomi.
“It’s a conspiracy,” repeats Jimmy Fallon, because nothing pleases American show business more than a good Hollywood story. This should be one. That baby from Mataró became a professional, took Barça’s ’10’ and Spain’s ’19’ and challenges the one who once bathed him.
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