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Lamine Yamal, star of the Spanish national team, will fulfill his dream of facing Leo Messi, his idol, almost 19 years after the iconic photo in which the Argentine star bathed the Spanish player, when the latter was just a few months old.
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"Well, I've grown a bit and so has Leo. Hopefully I can face Lionel Messi in the final, since we couldn't in the Finalissima," Lamine Yamal expressed during an interview with DAZN when he was shown the photo in which Leo Messi, with long hair, washed a baby. A photo for a 2007 club charity calendar.
The baby, just a few months old, is now one of the stars of the Spanish national team, whom Messi will face on Sunday at MetLife in New Jersey/New York, and how the photo was created was told two years ago by its author, Joan Monfort, to the EFE Agency.
It all started with a post that Mounir Nasraoui, Lamine Yamal's father, shared on Instagram in 2024, in which a smiling baby could be seen enjoying a bubble bath in a small tub along with his mother, his wife Sheila Ebana, and a young Leo Messi. An image from 2007 that was included in a charity calendar.
And from that moment, the image went viral. Messi and Lamine Yamal coincided in space and time almost nineteen years ago, but only the young Barça player's parents knew the fact and had not shared it with anyone.
It has been a wink of fate or destiny, a touch of chance or luck that has brought together in an image the great genius of football with one who promises to be one, one with the intention of putting the final touch on his career in the World Cups, the other in search of his first star.
"There is no money that can pay for a photo like that," Joan Monfort (Barcelona, 1968), the author of a photo, commented to EFE. "Besides, I don't know if I would be able to take it, nor if it is something that could be bought with money."
Monfort did not know the baby's identity. A former colleague from the newspaper Sport, which promoted the calendar, pointed out the coincidence to him, the photo of the 'bath of the gods'.
"These were photos for a charity calendar in which all Barcelona players participated, in one of them Messi participated, who at that time was far from the super-known player that he is, a calendar with the participation of UNICEF," he recalled.
A raffle was held in the popular neighborhood of Rocafonda (Mataró) looking for babies for some photos. "Chance brought them together, the photo could have been with another player, but it was with Leo. Surely if the baby's family could have chosen, the photo would have been with Ronaldinho, with Xavi or with Iniesta," he insisted.
He remembers how he devised the photo, which was not in a studio. The maroon background, the lights to illuminate the space, he wanted to narrow down the scene to have everything more or less controlled.
"There is a moment when Messi appears and meets a baby. Messi must have been 20 years old, the baby, 8 months. Surely it was the first baby that Leo had held in his arms and of course, the interaction between the two was complicated," he adds.
Messi turned 39 during the World Cup. Lamine celebrated 19 on July 13th, the number he wears on his shirt and with which Messi debuted at Barcelona. On Sunday, both will be rivals in search of the world title.
[Publicidad]