You may now be familiar with the absolutely remarkable story of Lionel Messi and Lamine Yamal’s first meeting.Messi helped bathe a five-month-old Yamal as part of a charity photoshoot at Barcelona back in December 2007. It is such an extraordinary coincidence that it scarcely feels believable — even with the photographic evidence.On Sunday, the pair will finally meet again — for the first ever time on a football pitch — in the World Cup final between Spain and Argentina.Messi is now 39. In what is widely expected to be his last game on this global stage, he has a chance to add a fourth World Cup winner’s star to Argentina’s jersey.Yamal, 19, is Spain’s biggest name and, like Messi, is capable of inspiring his national team to what would be a second title. In the years since their first encounter, he has also emerged as perhaps the closest possible heir to Messi’s legend at Barcelona.The whole thing is just extraordinary, and it has become a big part of the global conversation around Sunday’s match.“Honestly, that photo of us is crazy, because — well, that’s life, right? I took a photo with him as a baby, and here we both are, facing off in a World Cup,” said Messi on Friday in New York.“Lamine is a huge talent, someone I’ve followed a lot because he plays for a club I love and I always wish him the best, I always want the best for him. And, well, he’s one of the world’s benchmark players at 19 years old, and he has his whole career ahead of him. He has a great opportunity to achieve something historic, which we’ll try our hardest to make sure doesn’t happen this time. I just want to wish him the best.“It’s crazy. He’s one of the best in the world right now, no doubt about it. And I wish him a lot of luck, because what’s good for him will also be good for Barcelona.”The probability of Messi and Yamal appearing in the photos together, and then meeting in a World Cup final, has been widely debated on social media.Some estimates have put the chances somewhere in the one in 48billion ballpark. All we can say for sure is that it’s incredibly unlikely. But it’s happening.The photos re-emerged during the European Championship of 2024, after Yamal’s father, Mounir Nasraoui, posted them online.“Life has these coincidences,” Nasraoui told newspaper Mundo Deportivo as Spain prepared for the July 14 final against England, which they won 2-1, the day after Yamal’s 17th birthday.Some people’s reading of the photo suggested Messi was somehow ordaining his future successor with a blessed talent that was now coming good. Yamal’s dad suggested it could actually have been the other way around.“Maybe Lamine was giving it to Leo, I don’t know,” Nasraoui said. “For me, my son is the best. In everything.”(FC Barcelona/Diario Sport/Joan Monfort)The photographer who took the shots explained in a 2024 interview with The Athletic how it all came about. It was for a charity calendar Barcelona used to produce each year in partnership with UNICEF and others, including local newspaper Diario Sport.Joan Monfort said he “sweated blood to take it” because Messi, then 20, was “shy” and, having been partnered with Yamal, “found himself with a tiny baby in a plastic bath full of water”.He added: “At the start, there was not much interaction. But, bit by bit, it started to happen and in the end, it’s a pretty good photo.“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. Destiny plays an important role in these things.“The chances of all this happening was like winning the lottery, although it’s not sorted me out financially for life.”It also feels remarkable that, given the many parallels and similarities in how their lives progressed from that point, they have not met more regularly since.For a while now, fate has seemed to be keeping Yamal and Messi apart.