Milan, 18 July (LaPresse) – “My heart is torn.” Almost twenty years ago, photographer Joan Monfort didn’t think much of his photo shoot depicting a teenage Lionel Messi bathing a baby in a plastic bath. Everything changed when, years later, that little boy turned out to be Lamine Yamal. Now those images of Messi with long hair and soapy hands – as if to anoint Yamal as football’s next great hope – have become the most talked-about and admired ahead of Sunday’s World Cup final, in which Messi’s Argentina will face Yamal’s Spain for the most prestigious trophy. “I never believed there was anything predestined (about that photo), but I’m starting to have my doubts. This defies any rational explanation,” Monfort told the Associated Press from his home in Barcelona on Friday. A freelance photojournalist for the AP, Monfort took the photos in 2007 for a charity calendar produced by the local newspaper *Sport* and UNICEF.
2026 World Cup, photographer who took the Messi-Yamal photo: ‘My heart is torn ahead of the final’
Milan, 18 July (LaPresse) – “My heart is torn.” Almost twenty years ago, photographer Joan Monfort didn’t think much of his photo shoot depicting a teenage Lionel Messi bathing a baby in a plastic bath. Everything changed when, years later, that little boy turned out to be Lamine Yamal. Now those images of Messi with long hair and soapy hands – as if to anoint Yamal as football’s next great hope – have become the most talked-about and admired ahead of Sunday’s World Cup final, in which Messi’s Argentina will face Yamal’s Spain for the most prestigious trophy. “I never believed there was anything predestined (about that photo), but I’m starting to have my doubts. This defies any rational explanation,” Monfort told the Associated Press from his home in Barcelona on Friday. A freelance photojournalist for the AP, Monfort took the photos in 2007 for a charity calendar produced by the local newspaper *Sport* and UNICEF.
