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Matinee: 'The Messi-Yamal Photo'
18 July 2026
Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?
So we're pleased to present the 665th in our series of Saturday matinees today: The Messi-Yamal Photo.
This is a one-minute visit with Joan Monfort, the photographer who took the UNICEF publicity photo of a young Lionel Messi with three-month-old Lamine Yamal.
The liner notes tell the story:
Lamine's family won a raffle to appear alongside Lionel Messi in a UNICEF calendar, and in 2007, photographer Joan Monfort captured pictures of a chubby-cheeked, 3-month-old Lamine in a blue plastic tub being given a bath by none other than Lionel Messi, then 20.
And on Sunday, they will face each other in the final of the 2026 World Cup, Messi playing for Argentina and Yamal for Spain.
That raffle ticket was pure chance. And assigning Messi to the infante Yamal even more so.
But it's made Monfort believe in the soccer gods who make miracles happen when nothing less will do.
(In God's Will? Destiny? Lionel Messi, Lamine Yamal, That Photo and the World Cup Final, Sid Lowe writes a bit more about the story.)