A 2007 picture has resurfaced, showing a then-20-year-old Lionel Messi with a baby who would turn out to be Spain's youngest ever player and the winner of the Euro 2024 Best Young Player award.
ADVERTISEMENTOne photo has been going viral these past few days, especially following Spain’s Euro 2024 win.
Not one of the team brandishing the cup, or of Gareth Southgate cursing the high heavens, but one taken by Joan Monfort, a Barcelona-based freelance photographer for the Associated Press, who did a photoshoot for UNICEF back in 2007.
The picture has resurfaced, showing a then-20-year-old Lionel Messi holding a baby and posing with the inflant in the bath alongside his mother.
As it turns out, game was recognizing game (or a transference of power was occurring), as the child in question is Spain’s teenage prodigy Lamine Yamal, who turned 17 three days ago and was crowned Best Young Player of the Euro 2024 tournament.
Having become Spain's youngest ever player, Yamal went on to become the youngest ever at a European Championship at Euro 2024 in Germany this summer. The player’s strike helped send Spain into the final, as he helped his team beat France 2-1. Then aged 16 years and 362 days, the strike made him the youngest man to score in the tournament's history.
The 2007 photo of Messi and Yamal drew attention after it was posted on Instagram by Yamal's father, Mounir Nasraoui, with the caption: "The beginning of two legends."
Like Messi before him, Yamal has gone on to play for Barcelona. He went on to Barcelona's renowned La Masia youth academy, and made his debut for Barcelona in April 2023. He became the club's youngest ever starter and goalscorer, as well as the youngest scorer in the Spanish league.
Messi was 18 when he made his international debut, and won the Champions League four times with the club. He remains Barcelona's record goalscorer with 672 goals.
"UNICEF did a raffle in the neighbourhood of Roca Fonda in Mataro where Lamine's family lived,” said Monfort. “They signed up for the raffle to have their picture taken at the Camp Nou with a Barca player. And they won the raffle.”
"He [Messi] didn't even know how to hold him at first," Monfort said, recalling the difficulties of the shoot. "Messi is a pretty introverted guy, he's shy. He was coming out of the locker room and suddenly he finds himself in another locker room with a plastic tub full of water and a baby in it. It was complicated."
Monfort said it was only when the photo started going viral online last week that he realised that the baby was Yamal.
“It’s very exciting to be associated with something that has caused such a sensation,” he said.
“It’s been really surprising, all this,” he told The Athletic. “We take so many photos, so many images. Some of them will remain.”
“For Lamine to grow up to be a footballer, and to have this photo, I’m just really happy it happened. It’s especially nice in today’s football, when so much is to do with money and power.”
