The inside story of Lamine Yamal’s viral photo with Leo Messi when he was just six months old

A few hours before the quarterfinal match European Cup between Spain And Germanyin which Laminate Yamal will be in the starting lineup at the age of 16, his father shared on his account Instagram a photo that quickly went viral. Her son was in it as a baby, along with his almost-teenager. Leo Messi.

“The beginning of two legends,” he wrote. Munir Nasrui in the message accompanying the publication. The difference between Messi, born in 1987, and Lamin Yamal, born in 2007, is 20 years. The photo was taken in the first year of life of the current young wunderkind-culé, so Leo spent only his fourth season in the main team. club. Football Club Barcelona

since its debut on October 16, 2004.

It was impossible to imagine the fate of the two main characters in the photo. Messi was a promising man who set high goals, but no one could have guessed that he would end up winning eight Balls gold and became what many consider the best football player in history. Lamina was still a child, and therefore it was not expected at that moment that she would become one of the best pearls to come out of it. Masia in recent times.

Messi ‘blesses’ Lamine

The photo in question is the first of the two together. Lamine then spent time with Messi from the time he joined Barca’s youth team at the age of seven until the Argentine left the club in 2021. So there are a few more photos of them together taken some time later.

But there is a special reason for this first photo. The picture was taken in December 2007 by a photojournalist. Joan Monfort for a Catalan newspaper Sport and was used in the 2008 solidarity calendar, which involved Barça’s first team players. Thanks to this initiative, Messi and Lamine were able to get to know each other long before they knew what they were capable of in football.

Wearing a grey sweatshirt and with his hair the way he wore it in his early years, Messi appears in a photograph with little Lamine in a small bathtub and a woman who is none other than Yamal’s mother. Sheila ebony.

Because of the figures that appeared in the photo and the scene with Lamine’s bathtub itself, many fans were quick to point to this moment as the day Messi “blessed” Yamal. Leo is a legend of Barça and world football, and Lamine was just beginning his journey to become like his idol, whom he met by a wonderful coincidence when he was a child.