Messi once bathed baby Lamine Yamal. Now they're meeting in a World Cup final.

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Lamine Yamal and Lionel Messi go way back.

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So far back, Yamal can't even remember meeting the Argentina great.

See, Spain's teen superstar was born in the Barcelona area. In the fall of 2007, when he was a few months old, Barcelona the soccer team held a raffle for local families to win the chance to have a photoshoot with one of the team's players. The photos were going to be part of a calendar that would raise funds for UNICEF, the humanitarian organization that once graced the front of Barcelona's jerseys.

Yamal's family was one of those chosen in the raffle, and Barça paired its then-up and coming star Messi with the baby for their photoshoot. But Messi didn't just hold baby Yamal, though those photos are adorable in themselves. No, he took photos with Yamal in a bathtub, as if he was bathing him.

“Messi is a pretty introverted guy, he’s shy,” Joan Monfort, the photographer who took the photos, told the Associated Press in 2024. “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. It was complicated. He didn’t even know how to hold him at first.”

The photos began circulating when Yamal signed with his hometown team. And now the duo will come full circle, meeting in Sunday's World Cup final. Showed a photo of their now-world famous photo shoot after Spain's victory over France in the semifinals, Yamal grinned.

"I hope to face him in a final," Yamal said.

What a photo this will be.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Messi once bathed baby Lamine Yamal. Now they're meeting in a World Cup final.

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