When Messi met Yamal: The photo that foreshadowed a World Cup final

Some photos age badly, others evoke nostalgia, and a few, a very few, become the prophecy of a fortune-teller nobody believes. The one of Leo Messi bathing a five‑month‑old baby in the away dressing room at Camp Nou belongs to the third category, Euronews writes.

The baby in the photograph was none other than Lamine Yamal, the Barcelona and Spain forward. This Sunday, the 19-year-old footballer will meet Messi again in the World Cup final in the United States.

The photo did not come from a marketing whim, but from a charity calendar that the FC Barcelona Foundation and the newspaper ‘Sport’ organised together with UNICEF to raise money for the organization’s programs.

Photographer Joan Monfort set up the shoot inside the away dressing room at Camp Nou, with families drawn by lottery in the Rocafonda neighbourhood of Mataró, where Yamal’s family lived. They were matched with Messi, who was then 20 years old and had already won LaLiga twice and the UEFA Champions League.

The photograph was used to illustrate the month of January in the calendar published in 2008, and there it stayed, dormant, for almost two decades.