Image Source, John Monfort
photo caption, Lionel Messi and Lamin Yamal in an iconic photo taken in 2007.Product information
The best footballer of all time and the heir to the throne of Barcelona’s right wing will meet each other for the first time this Sunday on the biggest stage: the 2026 FIFA World Cup final.
Given that Lionel Messi is already 39 years old and Lamine Yamal is just 19, the very fact that there could be a match in which they both play – not to mention that it is the most important of them all – is a testament to the tireless persistence of the former and the precocious talent of the latter.
But this is not the first time their paths have crossed.
In 2007, when 20-year-old Messi had just established himself as Barcelona’s first-team player and Lamin Yamal was barely five months old, a meeting between them was immortalized in a series of photographs taken by Joan Monfort.
The images went viral two years ago when Lamin Yamal helped Spain win Euro 2024 and his father posted one online with the caption: “The start of two legends.”
The photos show a smiling Messi holding and bathing a young child who will eventually follow in his footsteps in football.
“If I sat down to write a story, I couldn’t come up with a better one,” the photographer tells the BBC.
“Everything behind this photo: who they are, how it was taken, how it came to be years later, and how far they’ve come, seems like the perfect story.”
“Messi, one of the greatest in history, and Lamine, who is now starting to write his own.”
“And now it culminates with the World Cup final, it’s like completing a perfect circle.”
History of photography
Play video “The Story with a Photo of Messi Bathing in Lamina Yamal”, duration 1.4801:48
Video title, Story with photo of Messi swimming in Lamine Yamal
The photo shoot took place in the visitors’ dressing room at the Camp Nou stadium, Barcelona’s stadium.
The Lamine Yamal family won a competition for the right to visit there.
His parents, Mounir Nasraoui, born in Morocco, and Sheila Ebana, from Equatorial Guinea, met after moving with their families to Catalonia when they were children.
Lamine is the eldest of their children, and shortly after his birth they took part in a lottery organized by a Catalan newspaper. Sport in collaboration with UNICEF, who were Barcelona’s shirt sponsor at the time.
“This was a UNICEF solidarity calendar session with FC Barcelona. Children of different ages, backgrounds and nationalities took part in it. We wanted it to reflect a society that is diverse and pluralistic, and to highlight that diversity.”
Randomly selected families had a professional photo shoot with their child posing next to a Barcelona first team player.
The Lamina family were one of the winners and were randomly selected to be Lionel Messi on the day of the session.
“I had no idea that the child in the photo was Lamin until a friend called me in 2024 and told me his father had posted it on Instagram,” Monfort says.
Image Source, Getty Images
photo caption, The famous photo of Messi with Yamal on posters during Euro 2024 and the current World Cup.
“Very shy”
Monfort came up with the idea for the bath after a newspaper colleague called him and said he would have to photograph Messi with the baby.
“At that moment I was bathing my daughter and thinking about how I could combine a football player with a child. Suddenly I saw it clearly. There was a photograph in front of me,” says the photographer.
“I thought, ‘Bingo.’ I’ll take a bath, a rubber duck, some soap and a towel.”
“Messi was barely 20 years old and very shy. He came hoping to meet a child and suddenly saw that it was a baby of a few months. His reaction was as if: ‘What are we doing here now?'” the photographer tells BBC Mundo.
“But everything went very well thanks to Sheila, Lamin’s mother. With a child that young, everything can go wrong, but the three of them hit it off straight away.”
“First we took a photo with the mother, and then I asked her if she dared to leave the baby to Messi. She agreed.”
“While I was taking photos, Sheila stood behind me so that Lamin would not lose sight of her and would be calm. Messi did everything on his part, and I just tried to capture a natural and pleasant moment. The end result was a very beautiful photo.”
Image Source, Getty Images
two legends
By the time Messi turned 19, he had already scored 11 goals as a professional and won La Liga and the UEFA Champions League.
Lamin Yamal, who turned 19 last Monday, has already scored 56 goals and won three Spanish championships, a Copa del Rey and Euro 2024.
In fact, Yamal is not his last name, but the second of his two names.
His full name is Lamin Yamal Nasraoui Ebana, and he wears the first two names on the back of his jersey, both with Barcelona and with the Spanish national team, as a tribute to the two people who helped his family during his birth.
It was widely reported in the Spanish press that the footballer’s father named him Lamin Yamal in honor of two friends who helped the family financially when they had difficulty paying bills.
Lamin is a common Arabic boy’s name that can be translated as “honest” or “trustworthy”, and Yamal is a variant of Jamal, which means “elegance” or “beauty”.
The footballer, who is now one of the stars of the Spanish national team, grew up in Rocafonda, a working-class district of Mataro, about 30 kilometers north of Barcelona.
The area was built in the 1960s to receive migrants from other regions of Spain, and as many of these families moved to other areas, immigrants from other countries began to arrive in the 90s.
Lamin Yamal celebrated some of his goals by making a 3-0-4 count with his fingers, referring to Rockafond’s postcode.
“What my mother did, what my father did, I could not do for anyone except my son,” Yamal told El País newspaper at the start of the World Cup.
“If you don’t have money, it’s very difficult to help your son play football. And my parents made this possible. I can never thank them enough.”
For Monfort, a Catalan Barcelona fan, the first confrontation between Messi and Yamal on the pitch is the perfect ending to a story that began almost two decades ago.
“I think we’re closing the loop on his story,” says the photographer, now 58. “It’s a happy ending.
“I am a Barcelona fan and I think it would be ideal for Messi to end his career by winning the World Cup for the second time. I think he deserves it.
“And Lamin still has a lot of time to win titles like the World Championship. But he is in a very good moment and if he wins it will be a title of special value, even greater than the other trophies he has won.”
“It’s very difficult for me. My heart is breaking in two.”
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