The story behind Messi and Yamal’s chance first meeting

Sometimes, reality can be stranger than fiction. In an incredible twist of fate, almost two decades after their first meeting, when Lionel Messi was a 20-year-old football prodigy and Lamine Yamal a six-month-old infant, the duo will meet again for the ultimate prize in all of football – the World Cup trophy.

This will be their first-ever meeting on the football field. Both are La Masia graduates in Barcelona, but by the time Yamal broke into the senior side, Messi had left the club.

However, their history began in the Camp Nou dressing room.

In December 2007, a charity raffle run by Spanish newspaper Diario Sport and UNICEF offered Catalan families a photoshoot with Barcelona players. Yamal's family, then living in Mataro, won a slot.

Yamal was paired with Messi inside the Camp Nou dressing room. Messi held baby Yamal in a plastic bathtub as a photographer worked around him.

“It was complicated. He [Messi] didn’t even know how to hold him at first,” AP photographer Joan Monfort, who shot the session, was quoted by Australia’s ABC News.

“He [Messi] was coming out of the locker room, and suddenly he finds himself in another locker room with a plastic tub full of water and a baby in it,” he added.

The images were then archived and largely forgotten. They resurfaced in 2024, when Yamal's father, Mounir Nasraoui, posted one on Instagram after his son's Euros debut, captioning it "the beginning of two legends."

Nearly 20 years on, the two will meet again — this time as Argentina's talisman and Spain's teenage sensation, on football's biggest stage in New Jersey.

Messi is on the verge of making history with Argentina again, set to compete in his third World Cup final, aiming for his second triumph.

Meanwhile, Yamal, who turned 19 on July 13, is eyeing to win the ultimate prize in his very first World Cup.