W
hile there have been plenty of coincidences in football, few could beat the current one taking place in the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
On Sunday, Messi's team Argentina is set to play against Spain, with Messi, who will be turning 39 this year and trying to secure another consecutive World Cup title, going against Yamal, who is just 19 years old and playing for the first time at the World Cup stage.
But what makes this match unique is the photograph taken nearly 20 years ago of the two together—Messi, who was a young footballer at that time, and the baby who grew up to be his adversary on football’s biggest stage.
The photo resurfaced massively after Argentina's surprise victory over England in the semi-final match, and the image became even more popular when the father of Yamal, Mounir Nasraoui, posted a version of it on his Instagram account with the description, "The beginning of two legends." No wonder that many football enthusiasts thought the photo was an AI creation.
Soft lights, a bizarre setting of a plastic bathtub in the locker room, and the perfect symmetry of two young stars who have not played against each other for years yet all contributed to making people think that the photos were made with artificial intelligence.
UNICEF felt obliged to clarify the truth about the images.
The organization stated on its social media accounts on Thursday, July 16, that the photos were authentic, as the baby Lamine Yamal and his mother Sheila had taken pictures with Lionel Messi during a fundraising photoshoot conducted by UNICEF more than 18 years ago.
It is worth adding that both players work as the Goodwill Ambassadors for UNICEF and use their influence to speak up for children all around the world.
From the recollection of the photographer himself, the photograph comes from a calendar charity project done in 2007, which was jointly organized by the Spanish Catalan newspaper known as Diario Sport together with UNICEF and the FC Barcelona Foundation.
The project called on families all over Barcelona to have a photograph of themselves alongside first-team football players in the production of a 2008 calendar.
A raffle was conducted by UNICEF in the Rocafonda area of Mataro, a town not far from Barcelona where the family of Yamal lived.
His parents participated in the raffle and were chosen to have a photograph taken with a first-timer player of Barcelona, which in this case happened to be the young Messi, who was only twenty years old at the time.
As the freelance photographer Joan Monfort, who was working for the Associated Press at the time, would say afterwards, it was a rather embarrassing situation for the young and shy Messi who did not really know how to handle the baby because, after having come out of the locker room, he had been seeing himself staring at the plastic bathtub filled with water and containing an infant in it.
However, as time went by and the session lasted, it turned out that no one among those present during this particular session could understand what a huge meaning their experience was going to have.
Years would pass until these photos became widely popular since Yamal himself grew into a football star and received another chance to become popular.
In 2024, the player made the goal, making him the youngest player to score in a European Championship, which increased his popularity in the world of football. Meanwhile, his father's goal was to post these photos on social media to showcase the connection between his son and the famous football star, thus making the picture even more popular.
And yet, even that did not clear everything up, as numerous internet commenters had questions about the authenticity of the image, owing to how good artificial intelligence-generated images are these days.
However, this was clarified by the Associated Press at that time, who affirmed that the pictures are real and provided more shots taken during that shoot.
This week's statement by UNICEF and the confirmation from Barcelona on their involvement in the 2007 photo shoot have settled everything once and for all.
One more bit of symmetry can be seen in the fact that both of these players have been developed within the ranks of Barcelona's famous La Masia academy, the system which created the legend of Lionel Messi and is now doing the same with Yamal.
Messi played almost twenty years with Barcelona before he left the club in the late stages of his career, while Yamal managed to earn his way onto the first team in his teenage years and became one of the best attacking players in the world.
It was always going to make sense that these two should end up together on the football field at some point in time. However, it has taken football, through one of those stories it sometimes creates without any need for exaggeration or manipulation, for these two to play against each other in the World Cup final.
