{"id":803082,"date":"2026-07-16T03:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T03:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/803082\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T03:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T03:02:10","slug":"world-cup-final-the-story-behind-lionel-messis-famous-photo-with-a-baby-lamine-yamal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/803082\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup final: The story behind Lionel Messi’s famous photo with a baby Lamine Yamal"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Messi’s eyes, though, trace towards a young mother and her tiny baby boy.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Yamal’s mother, Sheila Ebana, joined Messi at the photo shoot. (AP: Joan Monfort)<\/p>\n

If not for the lack of frankincense and myrrh \u2014 and the comparative glamour of Camp Nou to a stable \u2014 it could have looked like a scene straight out of Bethlehem.<\/p>\n

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 Matar\u00f3.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Lamine<\/p>\n

Lamine Yamal has become one of the most talked about players in world football. (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“They signed up for the raffle to have their picture taken at the Camp Nou with a Bar\u00e7a player,” Associated Press photographer Joan Monfort said.<\/p>\n

“And they won the raffle.”<\/p>\n

It was for a calendar photo shoot, and at that time, Messi \u2014 now a father of three boys \u2014 had little idea what he was doing.<\/p>\n

“Messi is a pretty introverted guy, he’s shy,” Monfort said.<\/p>\n

More on FIFA World Cup 2026<\/p>\n

“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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It was complicated. He didn’t even know how to hold him at first.”<\/p>\n

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”.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“It’s very exciting to be associated with something that has caused such a sensation,” he said.<\/p>\n

“To tell you the truth, it’s a very nice feeling.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s 2007, and 20-year-old Barcelona superstar Lionel Messi quietly slinks out of the Camp Nou player change rooms…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":803083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[12910,64,63,376284,2649,107272,121458,2020,85,21418],"class_list":["post-803082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-argentina","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-baby-photo","tag-final","tag-lamine-yamal","tag-lionel-messi","tag-spain","tag-sports","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/803083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}