With Argentina’s late 2-1 comeback win over England on Wednesday, Lionel Messi will now face Spain’s Lamine Yamal, the 19-year-old phenom widely touted as his heir apparent — or the closest thing to it — in the 2026 FIFA World Cup final on Sunday, July 19.
But this weekend’s title bout won’t be the first meeting between Messi, 39, and Yamal. The two actually crossed paths nearly 19 years ago in Spain, when Messi, then 20 and playing for FC Barcelona, gave baby Yamal a bath — and was, unbelievably, photographed doing it.
You read that right.
The images of this “one in a billion” intergenerational encounter between the soon-to-be GOAT and his future World Cup final opponent first emerged in the summer of 2024, as Yamal (then 16, about to turn 17) was making headlines as the breakout star of Spain’s victorious UEFA European Championship campaign.
Yamal’s father, Mounir Nasraoui, posted a crop of one of the photos from the shoot on Instagram. “The beginning of two legends,” he wrote.
At first, soccer fans couldn’t believe the image was real. The smooth studio glow. The surreal situation. (Why a bath?) Messi’s goofy, beatific gaze. Not to mention the impossible odds. It had to be AI, right?
But the Associated Press quickly confirmed that Nasraoui’s post was, in fact, authentic, and published several other images from the shoot as well.
So, how did this even happen? The story goes that freelance photographer Joan Monfort was hired to snap a series of portraits of various Barça players posing with children and their families as part of a 2008 charity calendar organised by Catalan newspaper Diario Sport, in conjunction with UNICEF.
“UNICEF did a raffle in the neighborhood of Roca Fonda in Mataró, where Lamine’s family lived,” Monfort told the AP. “They signed up for the raffle to have their picture taken at the Camp Nou [Barcelona’s stadium] with a Barça player. And they won the raffle.”
Messi joined 5-month-old Yamal and his mother Sheila Ebana — who also appears in some of the photos — in the away team locker room at Camp Nou in the fall of 2007. Monfort said Messi was “very introverted and shy,” and initially “did not know how to hold [Yamal].”
“It was very difficult,” Monfort explained. “He entered the changing room to find a plastic bathtub filled with water and a baby inside.”
Nearly 19 years later, Messi and Yamal will now meet again — this time on the pitch at New York-New Jersey Stadium, with no rubber duckies in sight.
Yamal has grown up a lot since that long-ago bath (which even Monfort had forgotten about). He made his debut for Messi’s old club, Barça, at the age of 15 years, 9 months and 16 days — a record. (Messi was 17 when he did the same). He’s won three LaLiga titles, as well as that Euro 2024 trophy with Spain. And he has sparkled in the 2026 World Cup, terrorizing left backs for Uruguay, Portugal, Belgium and France and winning the penalty kick that helped propel his team to Sunday’s final.
But Yamal still has a lot of catching up to do. Messi scored 672 goals with Barça and won the most Balón d’Or awards in the club’s history (six). He also won the World Cup in 2022.
“There’s a new generation of footballers who are very good and have many years ahead of them, but if I have to choose one because of his age, what he’s done so far, and the future he can have, it’s Lamine,” Messi recently said about his younger counterpart. “There’s no doubt, for me he’s the best.”
Maybe Sunday’s final will be a passing-of-the-torch moment. Or maybe not. Either way, it’s a clash the football gods seem to have foretold almost two decades ago.
