From baby photo to World Cup quest: Yamal’s Messi chase continues

Lamine Yamal hit global headlines when he made his Barcelona first-team debut on April 29, 2023, at the age of 15. A winger blessed with dazzling skills, Yamal had already drawn comparisons with Lionel Messi, Barcelona’s icon who left the Catalan club in 2021 after a glittering near two-decade-long career that propelled the Argentinian into the galaxy of all-time greats.

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The La Liga spotlight was on Yamal, who came through La Masia, the famed youth academy of FC Barcelona where Messi honed his skills, as the teen prodigy was tipped to become the star of a club in transition.

Barcelona was also facing a crunch financial situation — unable to buy big names after a host of big names departed or retired.

It was against this backdrop that Yamal was beginning to show his incredible talent and a solid temperament as a footballer.

For someone so young, it was a rare combination to have at the elite level.

Yet, Lamine’s father, Mounir Nasraoui, who was born in Morocco, refused to get carried away by his son’s meteoric rise.

It was only after Yamal produced jaw-dropping performances for the Spanish national team at the Euro 2024, which included a sublime goal against Kylian Mbappe’s France in the semifinals, that Nasraoui finally revealed what the family had been hiding from the public for years.

As the Euro 2024 reached the business end with Yamal as the breakout star, Nasraoui shared an old photo of his son on Instagram.

Messi was bathing Yamal in that photograph taken in 2007 as Nasraoui dropped the caption: “The beginning of two legends.”

By 2007, Messi had burst onto the scene as a teenage phenomenon, but it took him 12 more months to become a goal-scoring machine.

Yamal was only six months old when that picture was taken as part of Barcelona’s charity calendar initiative in association with UNICEF.

Nasraoui kept those pictures as a secret until Yamal became Spain’s secret weapon in their 2024 Euro triumph.

Despite the obvious talent, nobody expected a 16-year-old to dominate the European Championship.

When Yamal’s string of outrageous performances took the breath away, Nasraoui finally dropped the Messi picture, sparking a tsunami of reels and videos on social media.  

Yamal has gone from strength to strength since then, playing big roles in Barcelona’s back-to-back La Liga titles in 2025 and 2026.

The youngster also inherited Messi’s iconic Barcelona number 10 shirt last year after signing a new contract with the Spanish club.

Despite an injury issue towards the end of the La Liga season, Yamal arrived in North America for the 2026 World Cup as Spain’s biggest hope.

He was brought on as a second-half substitute after Cape Verde, the third smallest country to qualify for the World Cup, frustrated the Spaniards in a heroic display of defensive football.

Yamal made those runs, but failed to unlock  Cape Verde’s defence which held on for a famous draw.

The goalless draw was celebrated like a World Cup triumph in Cape Verde, a country of 156,000 people.

But for Spain, one of the top two favourites alongside France, it was a major blow.

Yamal, though, returned to start their next game against Saudi Arabia on Sunday.

Until he was substituted in the 64th minute of the game, Yamal was unstoppable on the field, scoring his first World Cup goal in the team’s 4-0 win, which put Spain’s campaign back on track.

The curly-haired player also made six attempts on goal overall, and completed a highly impressive 88 per cent of his passes.

Before kick-off, the Saudi fans taunted him with ‘Where is Yamal?’ chants from the stands at the Atlanta Stadium.

Yamal responded with one message: “I am here” with a picture of him on Instagram celebrating his goal in the match.

While it’s intriguing to see the Yamals’ love affair with Instagram, what is even more fascinating is that the sport’s brightest young talent also eclipsed Messi’s World Cup record on Sunday.

Yamal’s first World Cup goal came at the age of 18 years and 343 days. Messi, on the other hand, was 18 years and 357 days old when he scored his first World Cup goal in 2006, almost a year before Yamal was born.

Incredibly, Messi had to wait until he turned 35 to lift the World Cup trophy in 2022.

Yamal may not have to wait that long to win football’s biggest prize. The incredibly talented Spanish team, with Yamal as the fulcrum, have what it takes to go all the way in North America.