No Longer A Baby In A Bathtub, Yamal Reunites With Messi At The World Cup Final

In 2007, a 20-year-old Lionel Messi posed for a Barcelona charity calendar, gently bathing a baby in a plastic tub. The baby's family had won a UNICEF raffle. Nobody thought about the photo again for 17 years.

The baby was Lamine Yamal.

You could write fiction for a decade and never come up with that. On Sunday at the World Cup final in New Jersey, the greatest player of all time faces the teenager many believe will inherit the title, and there's photographic evidence that Messi literally held him first.