He Bathed a Baby in a Blue Plastic Tub. Nineteen Years Later, That Baby Is His Rival.

A Raffle in Roca Fonda, a Locker Room, a Photographer Named Joan Monfort

Every year, UNICEF and Barcelona newspaper Diario Sport put together a charity calendar — twelve months, twelve photos of first-team players with fans who'd won the chance to meet them. In the Roca Fonda neighborhood of Mataró, a coastal city outside Barcelona, one family entered the raffle for a chance to pose with a player at Camp Nou. They won.

The player they got was a 20-year-old emerging talent named Lionel Messi. The family brought their five-month-old son. Photographer Joan Monfort set the scene in a visitors' locker room: Messi, the baby's mother, Sheila Ebana, and the baby himself — laughing, splashing, utterly unbothered by who was kneeling next to his little blue tub.

"Messi is a pretty introverted guy, he's shy. He was coming out of the locker room and suddenly he finds himself in another locker room with a plastic tub full of water and a baby in it." Photographer Joan Monfort, via CBS News

The photo ran on the calendar's page. Nobody involved had any reason to think about it again — it was one charity shoot among hundreds Messi did that decade. The baby's name was Lamine Yamal.

Two Goodwill Ambassadors, One Photograph Apart

Lamine Yamal grew up idolizing the club Messi built his legend at, and eventually wore the same Barcelona shirt. This year, he joined Messi as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in his own right — using the same platform, decades apart, to advocate for children's right to play. Neither man has said the photo shaped that path. But it's hard to look at now and not see a thread running through it.

What no one could have scripted is where that thread leads next.