It’s 2007, and 20-year-old Barcelona superstar Lionel Messi quietly slinks out of the Camp Nou player change rooms and into another room next door.
With his shoulder length hair and white hoodie, there’s something vaguely biblical about the man who would become arguably the greatest player that football has ever seen.
He’s shepherded in by his minders, a photographer fussing about in front of him, test flashes going off as all eyes fall on the Argentinian superstar.
Messi’s eyes, though, trace towards a young mother and her tiny baby boy.
Yamal’s mother, Sheila Ebana, joined Messi at the photo shoot. (AP: Joan Monfort)
If not for the lack of frankincense and myrrh — and the comparative glamour of Camp Nou to a stable — it could have looked like a scene straight out of Bethlehem.
Sheila Ebana is just 16 and from Equatorial Guinea. She had been working as a waitress in Catalonia when she fell pregnant to Mounir Nasraoui, originally from Morocco, with the pair settling in the town of Mataró.
It was there that the couple raised their little boy, winning a Unicef raffle to score a photo shoot with Messi in one of the most iconic football stadiums in the world.
Lamine Yamal has become one of the most talked about players in world football. (Getty Images)
That little boy was Lamine Yamal, the 19-year-old Spanish wunderkind who will take on Messi in Monday morning’s (AEST) FIFA World Cup final.
“They signed up for the raffle to have their picture taken at the Camp Nou with a Barça player,” Associated Press photographer Joan Monfort said.
“And they won the raffle.”
It was for a calendar photo shoot, and at that time, Messi — now a father of three boys — had little idea what he was doing.
“Messi is a pretty introverted guy, he’s shy,” Monfort said.
“He was coming out of the locker room and suddenly he finds himself in another locker room with a plastic tub full of water and a baby in it.Â
“It was complicated. He didn’t even know how to hold him at first.”
The photos were long forgotten until Yamal’s father posted them to Instagram in 2024, celebrating his son’s stunning Euros debut with the caption “the beginning of two legends”.
Monfort said at the time that Yamal’s father posted the images, he didn’t have a clue who the baby had gone on to become.
“It’s very exciting to be associated with something that has caused such a sensation,” he said.
“To tell you the truth, it’s a very nice feeling.”
- Argentina and Spain will face each other in the World Cup final on Monday morning at 5am. Join ABC Sport as we cover all the moments via our live blog.
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