Some things in life were meant to be.
A teenage John Lennon would always meet Paul McCartney at a church party in Liverpool. Robert De Niro and Martin Scorcese knew each other as children, if only for a fleeting moment. And 16-year-old Spanish phenom Lamine Yamal was destined to be a superstar soccer player, perhaps even one day the unquestioned best player in the world. (He’s undoubtedly already showing such chops at Euro 2024.)
I know this because over the weekend, a viral photo of Lionel Messi — widely considered the GOAT soccer player — bathing a baby Yamal surfaced on the internet.
Dearest readers, I can assure you the photo is real. The photo was initially highlighted by Yamal’s father, Mounir Nasraoui, on Instagram.
My initial reaction was probably as shocked as you are right now:
Lionel Messi with Lamine Yamal as a baby back in December 2007, from Spanish newspaper @sport.
It was a photoshoot organised for a charity calendar. pic.twitter.com/C7jCKbYnp7
— EuroFoot (@eurofootcom) July 5, 2024
Gah, I still can’t process this.
It is just so bonkers for someone as legendary as Messi to actually have this kind of early contact with Yamal, someone who may well become iconic soon in their own right. It is the trope of sports stars meeting their heroes in old photos taken to the absolute extreme. In an American context, this would be like prime Tom Brady meeting Patrick Mahomes as a toddler at a random dinner party.
According to Dermot Corrigan of The Athletic, Messi’s chance meeting with Yamal wasn’t so random by design. It’s just that photographer Joan Monfort didn’t quite realize it would eventually turn out to be an incredible twist of fate.
In December 2007, Montfort took a photo of a 20-year-old Lionel Messi, who had begun his legendary Barcelona career just over four years earlier, and Lamine Yamal — who was just six months old. It was published in a 2008 charity calendar organised by Barcelona’s club foundation and Catalan newspaper Diario Sport, with the money raised going to charitable organisations including UNICEF and different NGOs around Catalonia. Members of the Barcelona squad were photographed alongside children. Hundreds of families collaborated with the initiative for a number of years and most of the photos have now been forgotten, outside of the families of the children who have treasured private memories. It just so happens that Yamal, Barca’s teenage star of the future, ended up paired with the man who would go on to win the Ballon d’Or eight times.
You’re telling me that Yamal, someone who many think will help define men’s soccer for the next decade-plus, happened to be randomly paired with one of the greatest athletes of all time in a Barcelona charity photo shoot?
Y’all … WHAT?
Now I’m just hoping Yamal helps lead Spain to its fourth-ever European championship, and we can really jumpstart the way-too-early and anointed “next GOAT” talks.
Destiny is real, dearest readers. After seeing this, don’t you dare deny it.
