World Cup destiny: Messi bathed Yamal as a baby, now they face off for soccer’s top title

BARCELONA: Almost two decades ago, photographer Joan Monfort didn’t think much of his photo shoot of a teenage Lionel Messi bathing a cute baby boy in a plastic bathtub.
Not until the remarkable twist of fate became clear years later, when that infant blossomed into Lamine Yamal.
Now those images of the longhaired Messi, his hands covered in soap suds as if anointing Yamal as soccer’s Next Big Thing, have become the most talked about — and gawked about — in the runup to Sunday’s World Cup final, when Messi’s Argentina will play Yamal’s Spain for the biggest trophy in the sport.
“I have never been a believer or thought that anything was destined to occur, but I am beginning to have my doubts. This is beyond all reasonable explanations,” Monfort told The Associated Press from his home in Barcelona on Friday.
Monfort, who works as a freelance photojournalist for the AP, took the photos in 2007 as part of a charity calendar produced by local newspaper Sport and UNICEF.
Luck dictated that Yamal’s mother, who appears in the calendar photo, won a raffle of families in the city of Mataró, near Barcelona, who wanted to participate.

Soccer destiny then deemed that her baby boy, who would become a star for Barcelona some 15 years later, was paired up with the Argentine who would become the greatest of all time.
A tearful Messi left Barcelona in 2021 when the club was in financial trouble. Yamal erupted at the club two years later.