The baby in Messi’s 2007 photo will face him in World Cup final

By Francis Allan L. Angelo

In 2007, a 20-year-old Lionel Messi took part in a UNICEF charity photo shoot in Barcelona and posed with a newborn baby.

That baby was Lamine Yamal.

On Sunday, July 19, the two will share a pitch for the first time when Messi’s Argentina faces Yamal’s Spain in the World Cup final at New York New Jersey Stadium, known outside the tournament as MetLife Stadium, in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Kickoff is 3 p.m. Eastern time, or 3 a.m. Monday, July 20, in the Philippines.

It is the first World Cup final ever played between the two countries, and it may be the last international match of Messi’s career.

At 39, the Argentine captain is playing in his sixth World Cup. He leads the Golden Boot race with eight goals, and he assisted both goals in Argentina’s 2-1 comeback win over England in Wednesday’s semifinal in Atlanta, played Thursday morning in the Philippines.

Enzo Fernández equalized with a long-range strike in the 85th minute off a Messi pass. Seven minutes later, after Alexis Mac Allister’s shot struck the post, Messi collected the rebound and crossed for Lautaro Martínez, whose stoppage-time header sent the defending champions through.

The result came 40 years after Argentina eliminated England by the same 2-1 score in the 1986 quarterfinals in Mexico City, when Diego Maradona scored the “Hand of God” goal and the solo run later voted the “Goal of the Century.”

Yamal, 19, has already inherited much of what Messi left behind. Both are left-footed wingers who rose through the youth academy of FC Barcelona, where Messi played 17 seasons before leaving in 2021, and Yamal now wears the No. 10 shirt Messi made famous at the club.

Messi himself has anointed the teenager. “There is a new generation of footballers who are very good and who have many years ahead of them, but if I have to choose one because of age, for what he has done so far and for the future he may have, it is Lamine,” Messi said in May.

Yamal has scored once in his first World Cup but drew the penalty that opened Spain’s 2-0 semifinal win over France on Tuesday. If he starts and wins Sunday, he would become only the fifth player to win a World Cup final before turning 20, after Uruguay’s Rubén Morán, Brazil’s Pelé, Italy’s Giuseppe Bergomi, and France’s Kylian Mbappé, and the first to pair it with a European championship won before 20.

The final pits the tournament’s best attack against its best defense. Argentina has scored 19 goals, the most in the tournament, while Spain has conceded only one, and goalkeeper Unai Simón’s six clean sheets are a record for a single World Cup. Spain carries a 37-match unbeaten run into the final.

Argentina is chasing its fourth title and a second consecutive crown, a feat last achieved by Brazil in 1958 and 1962. Spain is seeking its second championship and its first since 2010.

The two teams were supposed to meet in March in the Finalissima, a scheduled showdown in Doha between the champions of South America and Europe, but the match was called off over security concerns tied to the conflict in the Middle East.

Sunday delivers that canceled meeting on a bigger stage, with a script no promoter could have written: the greatest player of his era, in what could be his farewell, against the teenager from his old photograph.

England, which had not lost the lead until Argentina’s late surge, will face France in the third-place match Saturday, July 18, in Miami Gardens, Florida.