Messi and Yamal collide in final that defies 625 trillion to one odds

Argentina’s Lionel Messi will face Spain’s Lamine Yamal in a World Cup final on Sunday, nineteen years after appearing together in a charity photo shoot, the odds of which was calculated to be roughly 1 in 625 trillion, according to a mathematical calculation using artificial intelligence.

The image, taken for a 2007 Christmas campaign by a Spanish newspaper with Barcelona and UNICEF at the Camp Nou dressing room, showed a 20-year-old Messi bathing a roughly six-month-old Yamal.

Yamal had been chosen through a charity raffle for the shoot and was accompanied by his mother.

To put this into perspective, Messi, as any person, was 40.6 million times more likely to get hit by a meteorite, 5.7 million times more likely to get attacked by a shark and 3.4 billion times more likely to get struck by lightning.

The photo resurfaced on social media in 2024, when Yamal’s father Mounir Nasraoui uploaded it on Instagram.

Messi, now a 39-year-old veteran, is chasing his second World Cup title. Yamal, who turned 19 last Monday, is seeking his first world title.