Lamine Yamal reveals heartfelt message to Lionel Messi after Spain beat Argentina in World Cup final

Lamine Yamal has opened up on the emotional moment he came face to face with Lionel Messi for the first time on a football pitch, revealing exactly what he told the Barcelona legend after Spain beat Argentina in the World Cup 2026 final in New York last summer.

The teenager spoke from the heart. The Barcelona star came up against the man many regard as the GOAT for the first time on the pitch, and after the final whistle the two embraced in a brief but memorable exchange that Yamal has now disclosed.

"I said thank you for everything you gave football. I don't do things to look nice for the photo; that came from inside," Yamal told the Guardian.

The famous bathtub photo Yamal kept hidden

Yamal also spoke about the infamous picture of the two for a charity calendar, in which Messi was photographed alongside a baby Yamal in a bathtub — an image that only came to light publicly in recent years as the Spaniard rose to stardom.

According to Yamal, the reason the photo stayed out of the spotlight for so long was simple: he asked his father to keep it hidden.

"Because I told him not to," Yamal explained. "He put it on Facebook once and I told him to take it down. Comparisons were too easy, that was all people would talk about."

"I wanted to be Lamine, not Messi"

Yamal made clear that from an early age he was determined to carve out his own identity rather than live in the shadow of the game's greatest ever player.

"I wanted to be Lamine; I didn't want to be Messi. I just wanted to get where I could get. I asked him to wait. When I'm Lamine, do what you want," he said.

With a World Cup winners' medal to his name and a heartfelt tribute delivered to Messi himself, it seems the teenager has well and truly arrived as Lamine — on his own terms.