When Joan Monfort took pictures of Lionel Messi with a baby for a charity calendar almost 17 years ago, he knew the long-haired young man would make it in football. He couldn’t have imagined the little boy would do the same.
The baby in the photos — which went viral on social media and were viewed millions of times on X (formerly Twitter) — was none other than Lamine Yamal, the Spanish prodigy who won the European Championship with Spain on Saturday, the day after his 17th birthday. Yamal is the youngest player ever to appear at a European Championship and is already being compared to the greats.
Spaniard Lamine Yamal celebrates victory with the trophy and his teammates at the 2024 European Championship in Berlin on Sunday. (Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters)
Messi also achieved a major success on Sunday: his Argentina won the Copa America, marking the team’s third major title in a row.
One of the long-forgotten photos from 2007 resurfaced after Yamal’s father posted it on Instagram on July 4 with the caption “the beginning of two legends.”
Monfort, 56, who works as a freelance photographer for The Associated Press and others, said the photo shoot took place in the dressing room of the visitors to Barcelona’s Camp Nou in the autumn of 2007, when Yamal was just a few months old.
Barcelona players posed with children and their families for a calendar as part of an annual charity campaign by local newspaper Diario Sport and UNICEF. Monfort was in charge of the photoshoots — and coincidentally, Messi was paired with Yamal’s family. His mother, who is from Equatorial Guinea, is pictured next to Messi and the baby.
Argentina striker Lionel Messi holds the trophy aloft with his teammates after winning the Copa America final against Colombia at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, Florida. (Nathan Ray Seebeck/USA Today)
“We made the calendar with the help of UNICEF. So UNICEF held a lottery in the Rocafonda neighborhood of Mataro, where Lamine’s family lived. They signed up for the lottery to have their picture taken at Camp Nou with a Barca player. And they won the lottery,” Monfort said.
It was not an easy task, he recalls, especially as Messi did not know how to handle baby Lamine, who was kept in a plastic container during filming.
“Messi is quite an introverted person, he is shy,” Monfort said. “He came out of the locker room and suddenly he was in another locker room with a plastic container full of water and a baby in it. It was complicated. He didn’t even know how to hold him at first.”
In this September 2007 photo, 20-year-old Lionel Messi helps Lamine Yamal, who was just 6 months old at the time, bathe his mother, Sheila Ebana. (Joan Monfort/The Associated Press)
Messi was 20 years old at the time and was already seen as a major talent, but it would take a few more years before he emerged as the most outstanding player of his generation for Barcelona and Argentina.
Like Messi, Yamal came through Barcelona’s famed youth academy, La Masia, and despite his age, was one of Spain’s best players at Euro 2024.
A series of photos from 2007 showing football legend Lionel Messi washing Lamine Yamal, now a star of the Spanish championship team, has gone viral. (Joan Monfort/The Associated Press)
Monfort, 56, had no idea it was Yamal in those 2007 photos until a friend messaged him when they started trending online. He has had a long career as a sports photographer since 1991, following Barcelona around the world, but said he has never experienced such excitement around one of his photos.
“It’s very exciting to be associated with something that has caused such a sensation,” he said. “To be honest, it’s a very nice feeling.”
Source link
https://dekyas.com/photo-of-young-lionel-messi-with-baby-lamine-yamal-goes-viral/