Do real photos show Lionel Messi bathing baby Lamine Yamal in 2007? Yes, it's true: It has been nearly 19 years since members of the Barcelona soccer team posed with children for a charity fundraising calendar. The five-month-old baby paired with then-20-year-old Messi was Lamine Yamal, who would go on to become a star player for Barcelona and the Spain national team. The two superstars will meet for the first time in competition at the World Cup final match between Argentina and Spain on Sunday, July 19, 2026, in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
The pictures appeared in a post (archived here) published by the X account @PolymarketSport on July 15, 2026. The post was captioned:
19 years later, they are set to face each other in the 2026 World Cup final!
These are the pictures included with the post:
(Image source: @PolymarketSport post on X.)
(Image source: @PolymarketSport post on X.)
A July 6, 2026, article about the chance meeting of these two soccer legends appears in The Athletic, a New York Times publication (archived here). It describes the purpose for the photoshoot:
In December 2007, Monfort took a photo of a 20-year-old Messi, who had begun his legendary Barcelona career just over three years earlier, and Lamine Yamal -- who was five months old.
It was published in a 2008 charity calendar organised by Barcelona's club foundation and newspaper Diario Sport, with the money raised going to UNICEF and other charities around Catalonia.
