Lionel Messi bathing his baby Lamine Yamal in a photo that shocked football fans

Some things in life were meant to happen.

A teenage John Lennon still met Paul McCartney at a church party in Liverpool. Robert De Niro and Martin Scorcese knew each other as children, if only briefly. And 16-year-old Spanish phenom Lamine Yamal was destined to become a football superstar, perhaps even the undisputed best player in the world one day. (He has undoubtedly already shown such qualities at Euro 2024.)

I know this because over the weekend, a viral photo of Lionel Messi – widely regarded as the greatest football player – bathing a Yamal baby surfaced on the internet.

Dear readers, I can assure you that the photo is real. The photo was originally put forward by Yamal’s father, Mounir Nasraoui, on Instagram.

My first reaction was probably as shocked as you are right now:

🚨🇪🇸🇦🇷 Lionel Messi with Lamine Yamal as a baby in December 2007, according to a Spanish newspaper @sport.

It was a photoshoot organized for a charity calendar. pic.twitter.com/C7jCKbYnp7

— EuroFoot (@eurofootcom) July 5, 2024

Gah, I always I can’t process this.

It’s just crazy that someone as legendary as Messi would have this kind of early contact with Yamal, someone who could well become an icon in his own right. It’s the cliché of sports stars meeting their heroes in old photos taken to the extreme. In an American context, it would be like Tom Brady meeting Patrick Mahomes as a toddler at a random dinner party.

According to Dermot Corrigan of The Athletic, Messi’s chance encounter with Yamal wasn’t so coincidental. It’s just that photographer Joan Monfort didn’t quite realise it would turn out to be an incredible twist of fate.

Via The Athletic:

In December 2007, Montfort took a photo of 20-year-old Lionel Messi, who had begun his legendary career at FC Barcelona just over four years earlier, and Lamine Yamal, who was just six months old. The photo was published in a 2008 charity calendar organised by the club’s foundation and the Catalan newspaper Diario Sport, with funds donated to charities including UNICEF and various NGOs in Catalonia. Members of the FC Barcelona team were photographed alongside children. Hundreds of families collaborated on the initiative over several years and most of the photos have now been forgotten, with the exception of the children’s families who have a personal memory of them. It so happens that Yamal, Barça’s future teenage star, ended up being associated with the man who would go on to win the Ballon d’Or eight times.

You’re telling me that Yamal, someone many believe will help define men’s football for the next decade and more, happened to be paired with one of the greatest athletes of all time at a charity photoshoot in Barcelona?

All of you… WHAT?

Now I just hope that Yamal helps Spain win their fourth European Championship, and that we can really get the much too early and timely discussions about the “next GOAT” back on track.

Destiny is real, dear readers. After seeing this, don’t dare deny it anymore.