UPDATE
Jul 21, 2026 2:00 AM CDT
A photo of a young Lionel Messi and a very young Lamine Yamal is becoming a trading card, the AP reports. The recently unearthed picture of a 20-year-old Messi holding baby Yamal, then five months old, in 2007 during a charity photo shoot went viral when the two faced each other in the World Cup final. Now trading card company Topps says it will release the image as a card later this year, ESPN reports.
Jul 16, 2026 9:20 AM CDT
Long before Lamine Yamal pulled on Lionel Messi's old No. 10 shirt for Barcelona, the two met over a plastic baby tub. The Athletic reports that in 2007, photographer Joan Monfort was shooting Barca stars for a charity calendar when a shy, 20-year-old Messi was paired with a 5-month-old infant from the Spanish city of Mataro: Yamal. The shoot, meant to raise money for UNICEF and local charities, was awkward at first—Messi with a stranger's baby, Yamal in a tiny bathtub.
"It was complicated," Monfort said in a 2024 interview with the AP, per USA Today. "[Messi] didn't even know how to hold him at first." Monfort now adds, however, that "Lionel was very professional," per CNN, and with the help of the infant's mother, the session yielded a handful of tender images. The photos were filed away, with copies given to the family, and largely forgotten, per the Athletic. Nearly 20 years on, that baby is now 19 and Spain's breakout forward, leading his country at the World Cup, where a Sunday final against Messi's Argentina at MetLife Stadium now looms.
The bathtime shot resurfaced during Euro 2024, when Yamal's father posted it online, with the caption "the beginning of two legends," per CNN. Monfort now calls the whole thing "a one-in-a-million chance," per the Athletic—a frozen moment from Messi's early rise that has become the defining image of Yamal's.
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