The Photo Nobody Noticed — Until It Meant Everything
Sometimes football throws up a story so strange you have to check it twice. This is one of them.
Around Christmas 2007, Barcelona and Unicef put together a charity calendar. A studio was set up in the away dressing room at the Camp Nou, and each player was paired with a young child for their month. Lionel Messi, then a shy 19-year-old, was assigned January. Photographer Joan Monfort had come up with the concept the night before while bathing his own daughter — he arrived with a plastic tub and a rubber duck. A local mother named Sheila had put her four-month-old son into a draw to take part. That baby, chosen entirely at random, was Lamine Yamal.
Monfort got his shot, filed it away, and largely forgot about it. The image sat in a drawer for the best part of two decades with no particular significance attached to it.
Then, during Euro 2024, Yamal’s father Mounir dug it out and posted it on social media with the caption