Sports
The story behind the viral photos of Lionel Messi and a baby Lamine Yamal
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“It was a difficult photo to take,” Joan Monfort tells The Athletic. “We can say I sweated some blood to take it.
“(Lionel) Messi is still shy now; he was much more shy when he was starting out and he finds himself there with a tiny baby in a plastic bath full of water. And with his mother. At the start, there was not much interaction. It was difficult for all of them. But, bit by bit, it started to happen and in the end, it’s a pretty good photo.”
In December 2007, Monfort took a photo of a 20-year-old Lionel Messi, who had begun his legendary Barcelona career just over four years earlier, and Lamine Yamal — who was just six months old.
It was published in a 2008 charity calendar organised by Barcelona’s club foundation and Catalan newspaper Diario Sport, with the money raised going to charitable organisations including UNICEF and different NGOs around Catalonia.
Members of the Barcelona squad were photographed alongside children. Hundreds of families collaborated with the initiative for a number of years and most of the photos have now been forgotten, outside of the families of the children who have treasured private memories.
It just so happens that Yamal, Barca’s teenage star of the future, ended up paired with the man who would go on to win the Ballon d’Or eight times.
The bathing photo, as well as a number of other images from the shoot, including one where Messi is seen cradling a baby Yamal in a towel and another where his mother Sheila Ebana helps wash her son, have returned to public view because one was posted on social media on Thursday night by Mounir Nasraoui, the father of Barca’s Yamal — the record-breaking 16-year-old who is starring for Spain at this summer’s European Championship.
“It’s something incredible,” Monfort says. “Back then, nobody could imagine that this baby would be who he is now — and you could not have known that Messi would become who he became, either.
“We are talking about 2007. Messi was only beginning at Barca then. Destiny plays an important role in these things.”
In December 2007, Messi had already won two La Liga titles and a Champions League, but was still just an emerging talent in a squad full of established stars including Ronaldinho, Samuel Eto’o, Xavi, Andres Iniesta, Carles Puyol, Thierry Henry and many other household names.
“They gave you a list of players — 12: one for each month,” Monfort says. “You have to take your time. Often footballers come in and say, ‘Let’s go, let’s do it. I’m in a rush; what do you want to do?’.
“It can be a bit cold, especially in a photo where you need interaction between two people who do not know each other. Then, when one is six months old and the other is 20, it can get difficult, but it turned out pretty well.
“The mother helped a lot. Her presence was super necessary, so the baby did not feel it was too strange. You look for a tender image — something sweet and nice.”
Lamine Yamal has been a revelation for Spain at Euro 2024 (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
Monfort says he always tried to make sure each family got a copy of the photos he took to keep themselves, especially in this case given the effort Yamal’s mother made to take him to Camp Nou from the town of Mataro, north-east of Barcelona.
“I’d always want to give them a photo; it makes them really happy,” Monfort says. “The player might not be too worried but the parents of the kids would be very excited. They lived in Mataro, 40km away from Barcelona. Not everyone would do that, with a young baby too. They would have to make the trip, then wait for the player to arrive; for everything to be set up.”
Six and a half years later, Yamal started to get the train regularly from Mataro when he joined Barca’s La Masia academy.
GO DEEPER
What makes Lamine Yamal such a special footballer?
His progress has been phenomenal: a La Liga debut aged 15 in April 2023, an international debut at 16 last September, and now Yamal is a key part of the Spain side which on Friday beat Germany 2-1 to make the Euro 2024 semi-finals.
“It’s a one-in-a-million chance that this could happen,” Monfort says. “It’s such good fortune.
Lionel Messi is currently playing for Argentina at the Copa America (Mitchell Leff/Getty Images)
“These days, it happens a bit more as people have their phones and share photos, but this is like the photo of Guardiola as a kid applauding (former Barcelona and England manager) Terry Venables being carried on players’ shoulders. When Venables died, Pep posted the image.”
This photo of a 15-year-old Guardiola, himself then a La Masia student and Barca ball boy, later a Barca player and coach, and now Manchester City manager, is from April 1986. Englishman Venables was then midway through his three-year spell as Blaugrana coach and was hoisted aloft by players Paco Clos and Migueli after the team came from 3-0 down and then won a penalty shootout in a European Cup semi-final against Goteborg.
Monfort is still taking photos, these days for Madrid-headquartered Diario AS. He was surprised when a former colleague from Diario Sport contacted him after the photo of Messi and Yamal was posted and went viral.
“He asked me, ‘Was this my photo?’,” Monfort says. “I said ‘yes’. He sent me the photo and I asked him, ‘Who is the baby?’ and he started to laugh, and said ‘Lamine, Lamine’.
“He told me the father had put it on social media. In Sport, they could hardly believe it. They had just realised too.
“It’s been really surprising, all this. We take so many photos, so many images. Some of them will remain.
“For Lamine to grow up to be a footballer, and to have this photo, I’m just really happy it happened. It’s especially nice in today’s football, when so much is to do with money and power.”
GO DEEPER
Spain’s Lamine Yamal passes school exams during Euro 2024
(Top photo: Diario Sport/Joan Monfort)
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Toronto Maple Leafs No. 1 draft pick Gavin McKenna has already been on the ice with the team as it held its development camp this week, but the highly-touted rookie is going to have to make a big change for this fall.
His number.
When he was playing for the Western Hockey League’s Medicine Hat Tigers and then again at Penn State this past season, McKenna wore the No. 72.
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Toronto Maple Leafs top pick Gavin McKenna has revealed that he’ll be opting for a new number for his rookie campaign. (Photo by Brian Babineau/NHLI via Getty Images)
The expectation was that McKenna would wear No. 72 with the Maple Leafs, and he did so this week at development camp. Plenty of fans have also already ordered No. 72 jerseys with his name on the back.
On most rosters, No. 72 is unique enough that he wouldn’t run into any issues wearing it. However, on July 1, the Leafs signed two-time Stanley Cup champion goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, who has worn No. 72 for most of his career, except during his first two seasons with the Philadelphia Flyers, when he wore No. 35.
So, some were wondering how this would work out. Would the Leafs want their new franchise player to get his pick of the number litter, or would they defer to a two-time Vezina winner?
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Gavin McKenna wore No. 72 in juniors, as well as last season at Penn State. (Photo by Richard T Gagnon/Getty Images)
Well, it turns out that McKenna will be the one swapping numbers, and he’ll be switching to No. 92 this season.
McKenna had to get creative here because the obvious number changes were a no-go in Toronto. Adding 7 and 2 would be 9, but that was retired in honor of Charlie Conacher and Ted Kennedy.
Another option would’ve been to flip the digits and go with No. 27, but that was retired in honor of Frank Mahovlich and Darryl Sittler.
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So, 92 it is.
However, McKenna reached out to one of the three previous players to wear the number, Jeff O’Neill, to ask whether he was comfortable with him using it.
It’s fair to say he was down with the idea.
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McKenna will be a key piece of a Maple Leafs team that is looking to bounce back after a nightmare 2025-26 campaign that saw them finish last in the Atlantic Division.
It’ll be the culmination of nine minor-league seasons. But Eliezer Alfonzo‘s major-league debut on Sunday won’t include his family watching from Dodger Stadium.
Alfonzo’s younger sister, Eliana, and stepmother, Patricia, have been missing since last month when earthquakes caused widespread devastation in his home country of Venezuela.
“I’ve been trying to support my dad a lot, every day talking to him, trying to be with him,” Alfonzo said of the elder Eliezer Alfonzo, a retired major-league catcher. “It’s a little tough from here because I would like to be there with him, supporting him every day.”
His father, of course, would love to be in attendance for his son’s debut. He told him as much when he heard the Dodgers were calling him up.
The Dodgers switched their backup catchers Saturday, optioning Chuckie Robinson. They saw an opportunity to give Alfonzo some runway behind Dalton Rushing, with starting catcher Will Smith’s stay on the injured list expected to extend through the All-Star break.
The elder Eliezer Alfonzo, however, is doing whatever he can to locate his wife and daughter. Their dog was found alive, which gave the younger Eliezer Alfonzo hope.
“We’ve just gotta stay together as a family, as a country,” Alfonzo said. “Because I feel like we’re a beautiful country, we’re a really beautiful people over there. It’s not just about my family, it’s all families that have lost people already. But we’ve got hope. We just pray, we ask God to give them back to us alive.”
Alfonzo’s locker in the clubhouse is next to countryman Miguel Rojas’ stall. Rojas’ wife, Mariana, and their two children were in Venezuela, planning to renew Mariana’s passport and seek Venezuelan citizenship for their children, when the earthquakes hit. They managed to stay safe and have returned to the U.S.
“I just want to be here for him,” Rojas said. “At the end of the day, that’s the best thing I can do for him, is being a good teammate and being a friend for him. Because I know there’s going to be ups and downs. He’s going to have a lot of time to be caught [up] in baseball, and that’s going to probably take his mind away from stuff. But sometimes he’s probably going to feel weak, and he’s going to start thinking about his family. So I’m going to be here, I’m right next to him. And that’s what I told him.”
Rojas, who played against the elder Eliezer Alfonzo for years in Venezuela, reached out Saturday morning and promised him he’d save the ball from his son’s first major-league hit.
Sports
Kylian Mbappé’s seventh goal of the World Cup lifts France past Paraguay in physical Round of 16 match
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The United States may not have been in action on Independence Day, but France — who fittingly played an important role in the Revolutionary War — was on the pitch in Philadelphia against Paraguay in a massive Round of 16 clash for a trip to the quarterfinals.
It was a hot day in the birthplace of our nation, and that made things difficult for both teams in more ways than one.
While Paraguay is a great squad, they were significant underdogs against a heavily favored French team led by superstar Kylian Mbappé, who has been lighting it up this tournament.
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French and Paraguayan players get into a shoving match during their Round of 16 match on Saturday in Philadelphia. (Kyle Ross-Imagn Images)
Obviously, the heat itself is a factor, but it also made for a slower pitch, something that was believed to play into the hands of Paraguay.
However, most of the action in the first half was played on their end as France put the pressure on through the first half hour of the match.
It was intense, and that intensity boiled over in the 35th minute with some pushing and shoving after Mbappé and Paraguay’s Andrés Cubas started a wild shoving match.
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But while the intensity ramped up — and stayed high for pretty much the entire game — Paraguay weathered the storm and had every reason to feel good about reaching halftime with the game scoreless.
France got some more scoring opportunities in the early part of the second half, including a near-breakaway for Mbappé.
France’s Kylian Mbappe scored the go-ahead and ultimately game-winning goal against Paraguay on a penalty kick. (James Lang-Imagn Images)
In the 67th minute, France was awarded a penalty kick for a foul against Desire Doue that had to go to VAR for review, and it was Mbappé who took it.
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Mbappé has tended to do most of his damage in the second half, and that trend continued here with him drilling the penalty past Paraguay goaltender Orlando Gill.
That was his 19th career World Cup goal, and his seventh of this tournament alone, tying him with Argentina’s Lionel Messi for the tournament lead.
Paraguay seemed to fade after the Mbappé goal, but turned it on again late, forcing Mike Maignan to make his first save of the day about 89 and a half minutes into the match.
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It seemed like Paraguay’s plan was to try and get a rise out of the French, and they succeeded in drawing three yellow cards. In fact, they even tried to keep that going after the match with players meeting near midfield for some more pushing and shoving.
But France is moving on, and they will take on Morocco in a quarterfinal match on Thursday in Boston.
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