Photographer Of Legendary Messi-Yamal Photo Spills Details “Soccer Gods”

A Charity Raffle Captured Football’s Past And Future In One Blue Tub

Before Lionel Messi and Lamine Yamal meet in the 2026 FIFA World Cup final, dig out the photograph that somehow placed football’s past and future in the same room nearly two decades early.

In 2007, a 20-year-old Messi posed beside baby Yamal and his mother, Sheila Ebana, during a charity-calendar shoot at Camp Nou. One image shows Messi helping bathe the smiling infant in a small blue tub—a scene so perfectly arranged by fate that plenty of people initially assumed it had to be fake.

It was very real. Photographer Joan Monfort captured the now-legendary session for a 2008 calendar produced with FC Barcelona, Catalan newspaper SPORT and UNICEF. Yamal’s family had won a neighborhood raffle to appear with a Barça player. By pure chance, they were paired with Messi.

Speaking with 60 Minutes correspondent Jon Wertheim, Monfort revisited the photographs inside his Barcelona studio and admitted the odds still make no sense. His comparison was perfect: imagine discovering an old photograph of Michael Jordan giving baby LeBron James a bath.

The shoot itself was less mystical. It took place inside the visitors’ locker room at Camp Nou, where Messi walked in to find a plastic tub, water, a rubber duck and a baby he did not know how to hold. Monfort remembered the young footballer as quiet, introverted and visibly unsure of what he was supposed to do.

Ebana helped settle both baby and superstar. Little by little, the awkwardness softened, Yamal kept smiling and Monfort caught the tender image that would later look like a blessing passed from one Barcelona No. 10 to another.

Nobody involved understood what had been captured. Messi was still becoming Messi. Yamal was only a few months old. The photo went into the calendar, then disappeared into an archive with thousands of other assignments.

The image resurfaced in 2024 after Yamal’s father, Mounir Nasraoui, shared it online with a caption declaring it “the beginning of two legends.” Even Monfort initially needed help identifying the baby whose face had suddenly returned to screens around the world.

Now the photograph has completed its wildest possible circle. Messi leads defending champion Argentina into the World Cup final while Yamal carries Spain into the same match. The baby in the tub grew up to inherit Messi’s old Barcelona number and become the man standing between him and another world title.

When Wertheim asked whether he believed in football’s higher powers, Monfort said he had not before—but was beginning to believe in the “soccer gods” a little more.

Honestly, what other explanation are we working with here?

The Messi–Yamal Photo That Predicted A World Cup Final

Joan Monfort’s 2007 UNICEF calendar shoot paired a young Lionel Messi with baby Lamine Yamal nearly 19 years before Argentina and Spain reached the 2026 World Cup final.

Lionel Messi and Lamine Yamal, then and now. The 2007 UNICEF calendar photograph was taken by Joan Monfort; current tournament imagery via AP.

The image once looked like a sweet charity-calendar oddity. Today it looks like football writing its own flash-forward: Messi nearing the final chapter of an era while Yamal arrives carrying the future directly toward him.

Watch Joan Monfort Explain The Messi–Yamal Photo To 60 Minutes

Photographer Joan Monfort tells 60 Minutes correspondent Jon Wertheim how a 2007 UNICEF calendar raffle placed 20-year-old Lionel Messi beside baby Lamine Yamal—and why the World Cup final has made him reconsider the soccer gods.

Sources: 60 Minutes / CBS News; FIFA; UNICEF USA; Associated Press.