A 2007 picture has resurfaced, showing a then-20-year-old Lionel Messi with a baby who would turn out to be Spain's youngest ever player and the winner of the Euro 2024 Best Young Player award. One photo has been going viral these past few days, especially following Spain’s Euro 2024 win. Not one of the team brandishing the cup, or of Gareth Southgate cursing the high heavens, but one taken by Joan Monfort, a Barcelona-based freelance photographer for the Associated Press, who did a photoshoot for UNICEF back in 2007.
The picture has resurfaced, showing a then-20-year-old Lionel Messi holding a baby and posing with the inflant in the bath alongside his mother. As it turns out, game was recognizing game (or a transference of power was occurring), as the child in question is Spain’s teenage prodigy Lamine Yamal, who turned 17 three days ago and was crowned Best Young Player of the Euro 2024 tournament. Having become Spain's youngest ever player, Yamal went on to become the youngest ever at a European Championship at Euro 2024 in Germany this summer.
The player’s strike helped send Spain into the final, as he helped his team beat France 2-1. Then aged 16 years and 362 days, the strike made him the youngest man to score in the tournament's history. The 2007 photo of Messi and Yamal drew attention after it was posted on Instagram by Yamal's father, Mounir Nasraoui, with the caption: "The beginning of two legends.
" Like Messi before him, Yamal has gone on to play for Barcelon.