Messi's last World Cup chance meets Yamal's first as Argentina and Spain contest 2026 final

A photo that defied probability

In December 2007, Barcelona's Camp Nou hosted a charity calendar shoot for Sport newspaper, UNICEF and FC Barcelona. Each first-team player posed with a child. Lionel Messi, then a shy 19-year-old, was paired with a 4-month-old baby chosen by a draw in the Rocafonda neighbourhood of Mataró. The photographer Joan Monfort, who had brought a plastic tub and rubber duck after bathing his own daughter the night before, captured Messi holding the infant in a bubble bath. The baby was Lamine Yamal.

Maybe Lionel Messi has picked up lots of babies, maybe it's chance, but for those of us who have faith, who believe in something beyond, 'chance' is God's pseudonym when he doesn't want to sign his name.

The image was forgotten until Euro 2024, when Yamal's father Mounir Nasraoui posted it on social media with the caption "the beginning of two legends". UNICEF later confirmed the photo's authenticity, noting both players are now Goodwill Ambassadors.

The final in New York

On Sunday 19 July, Argentina and Spain contest the 2026 World Cup final in New York. Both sides reached the match undefeated. Spain drew their opening group game against Cape Verde; Argentina needed extra time to eliminate Cape Verde in the round of 16 and Switzerland in the quarter-finals. Each team carries an identical goal difference of +1 across their seven matches.

I think I've grown a little bit and Leo has too. I hope I can face him in a final.

For Messi, 39, it is almost certainly his last World Cup appearance. For Yamal, 19, it is his first, and the symbolism of a generational handover between two La Masia graduates has dominated the build-up.

Two paths to the national team

Both players had to choose their international allegiance. Messi moved from Rosario to Barcelona at 13, with the club funding his growth-hormone treatment. Spain showed interest, but in May 2003 the agent Horacio Gaggioli handed a VHS tape of the teenager to Claudio Vivas, assistant to Argentina coach Marcelo Bielsa. Bielsa, thinking the footage was fast-forwarded, demanded it be played at normal speed. Messi never wavered.

Yamal was born in Catalonia to a Moroccan father and an Equatorial Guinean mother. Morocco identified him as a talent in 2023, but he opted for Spain, the country of his birth. His grandmother Fátima Nasraoui had arrived from Tangier in 1990 and rebuilt the family's life in the Maresme region.

Fake images and a real legacy

The viral photo prompted a wave of imitations. RTVE's fact-checking unit VerificaRTVE debunked two widely shared fakes: one purporting to show Messi with Spain goalkeeper Joan García (the child was an Argentine boy named Tommy, photographed in 2010) and another with defender Gerard Martín (the child was Murtaza Ahmadi, an Afghan boy who wore a plastic-bag Messi shirt).

I didn't believe in destiny before, but now I do.

The real photograph, Monfort says, sat in a drawer for years. Its reappearance has turned the final into something larger than sport.