Image source, JOAN MONFORT/AP
Subtitle, Messi did not expect to find a child, said the photographer of the session.Article information
- Author, Writing
- role, BBC News World
10 July 2024
In 2007, a young Lionel Messi posed for a series of photographs with a child in the locker room of Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium for a charity calendar.
Messi, who was 20 years old at the time, was already emerging as Argentina’s soccer star and on his way to becoming what many consider to be the greatest player of all time.
But the photographer had no idea that the child in his arms would be earning awards in international football 17 years later.
Messi was carrying and bathing Lamine Yamal, the player of the Spanish national team who has made a sensation in the European Soccer Cup.
They are great goal against France in the semi-final on Tuesday will be one that people will be talking about for a long time
At 16 years and 362 days, the goal became the youngest player to score in the competition’s history.
The almost forgotten photo of Messi with Lamine resurfaced after Yamal’s father posted it on Instagram last week with the caption: “The beginning of two legends.”
Joan Monfort took the images in 2007who works as a freelance photographer for the Associated Press (AP).
The photo session was organized after UNICEF held a charity raffle in the town of Mataró, where the Lamine family lived.
“They signed up for the raffle to get a chance to take a photo at the Camp Nou with a Barça player. And they won,” Monfort told the AP.
The task was not so simplesaid the photographer.
“It has to be said that he was not the Messi of today, he was a very young and very shy boy,” he said.
“They told him he should take a photo for a solidarity calendar with kids, but I don’t think he expected to have a baby,” he said. “It was complicated. “I didn’t know how to hold a baby.”
Image source, Joan Montfort/AP
Subtitle, Sheila Ebana, Lamine’s mother, participated in the photography.
Like Messi, Yamal ended up playing for Barcelonawhere he became the club’s youngest starter and top scorer, as well as the youngest player to score a goal in the Spanish League.
Monfort said it was only after the photo went viral online last week that she realized the baby was Yamal.
The photographer admitted with feeling excited to be associated with something that left such an impression.
“It was a coincidence of a lifetime. At that moment you can’t imagine how it will be almost 20 years later. It’s an amalgamation of things that only happen once,” he told the Spanish newspaper El País.
And remember you can get notifications in our app. Download the latest version and activate them.