What's behind Lamine Yamal's baby photo with Messi
Young Lionel Messi looks happily at the Youngster of this Football European Championship: A picture of Lamine Yamal with the Football Superstar causes a stir. Now the photographer speaks.
A series of cute pictures will become an Internet hit today: In them, young Lionel Messi is seen together with a little baby, lying in a bathtub. Messi still had shoulder-length hair at the time, and the pictures are many years old - but who is the baby? Lamine Yamal, the 16-year-old Spaniard who became the youngest EM player in history at the Football European Championship.
His father Mounir Nasraoui posted one of the pictures on social media. In it, the little Yamal is seen with his mother Sheila Ebana and Messi, who has his hands in the bathwater. The title Nasraoui gave to the picture was: "The Beginning of Two Legends" - a very self-confident announcement. Yamal was supposedly only six months old at the time, Messi had already won the Champions League with FC Barcelona and his first World Cup participation behind him.
"Messi was shy"
Joan Montfort, the photographer of the now famous picture, reported to "The Athletic": "It was a difficult photo. Messi is still shy, but he was much shyer back then, and there he is with a tiny baby in a plastic tub full of water. And with his mother. At first, there was not much interaction." Messi was only 20 years old at the time. It was difficult for everyone, Montfort said. "But little by little, everything came together, and in the end, it turned out to be a pretty good photo."
Hundreds of families have contributed to the pictures for the initiative over the years. It was fate that Yamal was seen on a picture with Messi. "It's incredible," Monfort said. "Back then, no one could have imagined that this baby would become what he is now - and no one could have known that Messi would become what he is now. "We're talking about 2007. At the time, Messi was just starting at Barca. Fate plays a big role in these things."
Yamal follows in Messi's footsteps
Messi was indeed already a title winner with FC Barcelona at the time. He had already won two Meisterschale and the Champions League with the club in December 2007. Already in 2000, the Argentine had debuted in the youth team, his talent fascinated. Until 2021, he played for the club, leaving it mainly due to the financial problems of the club in the direction of Paris St. Germain. There, he never really warmed up, currently he plays for Inter Miami.
Completely unclear was turning into something during the photo shootings, of course, about the little baby. But the boy followed a similar career path as Messi: Yamal was trained like Messi at La Masia, the youth academy. In the spring of 2023, he debuted for the professional team as a mere 15-year-old. At his EM debut against Croatia (3:0), he replaced Kacper Kozlowski as the youngest player at a European Football Championship with 16 years and 338 days.
Montfort stated that he had always tried to get a photo of the children's families, they were very pleased with the memories. Yamal's family lived northeast of Barcelona at the time and had come specifically for the shooting from the 40 kilometers distant Mataro. A way that Yamal later drove regularly - he had joined the youth academy as early as five years old. "The chance that something like this would happen is one in a million," says Montfort. "It's a great luck."
Monday: MontagTuesday: DienstagWednesday: MittwochThursday: DonnerstagFriday: FreitagSaturday: SamstagSunday: Sonntag
After making history as the youngest player at the European Football Championship 2024, Lamine Yamal reminisced about his encounter with FC Barcelona and Lionel Messi. The iconic photo of them together in a bathtub was taken during an initiative aimed at capturing family memories.
As Yamal continues to follow in Messi's footsteps, having debuted in La Masia, the youth academy of FC Barcelona, at the age of five and later becoming the youngest player to represent Spain at the EM, the significance of their early encounter becomes even more profound.
