Lamine Yamal starred in one of the most emotional moments after the 2026 World Cup final, when he approached Lionel Messi to hug him after Spain’s victory over Argentina. The young Barcelona striker explained that the gesture towards the Argentine star was born out of admiration and gratitude.
Yamal, 19, looked for Messi after the game, aware that the Argentine was playing his last participation in a World Cup.
“I told him: ‘Thank you for everything you gave to football,’” Yamal told The Guardian newspaper, in statements reported by Sid Lowe.
The Spanish attacker assured that the hug was not intended to generate a striking photograph or fuel media coverage.
“I don’t do things to look good for the photo; that came from within me,” he explained.
The photo of Lamine Yamal with Messi when he was a baby
The meeting between both footballers also had a special meaning due to a photograph that went viral years ago. In 2008, when Yamal was just a baby, he appeared alongside Messi in a photo shoot for a UNICEF calendar.
The image regained notoriety after Yamal established himself as one of the great figures of world football.
The Barcelona player himself explained that on one occasion he even asked his father not to spread that photograph, because he did not want comparisons with Messi to mark his career from such an early age.
“Once my father posted it on Facebook and I told him to take it down. I wanted to be Lamine; I didn’t want to be Messi. I just wanted to go as far as I could go,” he said.
Yamal and Messi, protagonists of two generations
The hug after the 2026 World Cup final symbolically brought together two generations of football. Yamal had just won his first World Cup with Spain, while Messi, at 39 years old, was facing the final stretch of an extraordinary international career.
For Yamal, the moment also represented the opportunity to personally thank one of the footballers who marked an era, but making it clear that his intention has always been to build his own path.
