The story behind the viral photos of Lionel Messi and a baby Lamine Yamal

Follow live coverage of England vs Netherlands in the Euro 2024 semi-final today

“It was a difficult photo to take,” says Joan Monfort The Athletics. “We can say I sweated some blood to take it.

“(Lionel) Messi is still shy now; he was much shyer when he started and now he finds himself there with a little baby in a plastic tub full of water. And with his mother. There wasn’t much interaction at first. It was difficult for all of them. But little by little it started happening and in the end it’s a pretty good picture.”

In December 2007, Monfort took a photo of twenty-year-old Lionel Messi, who had started his legendary career at Barcelona just over four years earlier, and Lamine Yamal, who was just six months old.

It was published in a 2008 charity calendar organized by the Barcelona club foundation and Catalan newspaper Diario Sport, with the money raised going to charities including UNICEF and several NGOs in Catalonia.

Members of the Barcelona team were photographed with children. Hundreds of families have worked with the initiative over a number of years and most of the photos are now forgotten, apart from the families of the children who cherish private memories.

As luck would have it, Yamal, Barcelona’s teenage star of the future, ended up being paired with the man who would win the Ballon d’Or eight times.

The bath photo, as well as several other images from the shoot, including one of Messi cradling a baby Yamal in a towel and another of his mother Sheila helping Ebana bathe her son, are back in public view as one was posted on social media by Mounir Nasraoui on Thursday eveningthe father of Barca’s Yamal – the record-breaking 16-year-old who will star for Spain in this summer’s European Championship.

“It’s something incredible,” says Monfort. “Back then, no one could have imagined that this baby would be who he is today – and you couldn’t have known that Messi would become who he became.

“We are talking about 2007. Messi only started at Barcelona then. Fate plays an important role in this.”

By December 2007, Messi had already won two La Liga titles and a Champions League, but he was still just an emerging talent in a squad full of established stars including Ronaldinho, Samuel Eto’o, Xavi, Andres Iniesta, Carles Puyol, Thierry Henry and many more famous names.

“They gave you a list of players – twelve: one for each month,” Monfort says. “You have to take your time. A lot of times footballers come in and say, ‘Let’s go, let’s do it. I’m in a hurry; what do you want to do?’.

“It can be a bit cold, especially in a photo where you need interaction between two people who don’t know each other. When one is six months old and the other is twenty, it can get difficult, but it worked out quite well.

“The mother helped a lot. Her presence was super necessary so that the baby didn’t find it too strange. You look for a tender image, something sweet and kind.”

Monfort says he always made sure that every family got a copy of the photos he took for his own sake, especially in this case given the lengths Yamal’s mother went to to get him from the town of Mataro, northeast of Barcelona. ​​to Camp Nou.

“I would always like to give them a photo; it really makes them happy,” says Monfort. “The player might not be too concerned, but the kids’ parents would be very excited. They lived in Mataro, 40 km from Barcelona. Not everyone would do that, even with a young baby. They would have to make the trip and then wait for the player to arrive; to set everything up.”

Six and a half years later, Yamal started taking the train from Mataro regularly when he joined Barca’s La Masia academy.

GO DEEPER

What makes Lamine Yamal such a special footballer?

His progress has been phenomenal: a La Liga debut at the age of 15 in April 2023, an international debut at the age of 16 last September, and now Yamal is a key part of the Spain side that defeated Germany 2-1 on Friday defeated to reach the semi-finals of the 2024 European Championship. finals.

“There’s a one in a million chance that this could happen,” Monfort said. ‘It’s such luck.

Lionel Messi is currently playing for Argentina in the Copa America (Mitchell Leff/Getty Images)

“Nowadays it happens a little more when people have their phones and share photos, but this is like the photo of Guardiola as a child applauding (former Barcelona and England manager) Terry Venables being carried on the shoulders of players. When Venables died, Pep posted the image.

This photo of a 15-year-old Guardiola, himself then a La Masia student and Barca ball boy, later a Barca player and coach, and now manager of Manchester City, is from April 1986. The Englishman Venables was then halfway through his three-year He coached the Blaugrana and was hoisted up by players Paco Clos and Migueli after the team came from 3-0 down to win a penalty shootout in a European Cup semi-final against Gothenburg.

Today, Monfort still takes photos for Diario AS, its headquarters in Madrid. He was surprised when a former colleague from Diario Sport contacted him after the photo of Messi and Yamal was posted and went viral.

“He asked me, ‘Was this my photo?’” Monfort says. “I said yes.” He sent me the photo and I asked him, ‘Who is the baby?’ and he started laughing and said: ‘Lamine, Lamine’.

“He told me the father had put it on social media. In Sport they could hardly believe it. They had just realized it too.

“It was really surprising, all this. We take so many photos, so many images. Some of them will stay.

“The fact that Lamine grew up to be a footballer and that I have this photo, I am very happy that this happened. That is especially nice in today’s football, where so much has to do with money and power.”

GO DEEPER

Spain’s Lamine Yamal passes school exams during Euro 2024

(Top photo: Diario Sport/Joan Monfort)