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Watch: Lamine Yamal comforts Lionel Messi after Spain's World Cup 2026 triumph
The 19-year-old football star stepped away from the celebrations to console his childhood idol after Argentina’s 1-0 defeat in the World Cup final
- PUBLISHED: Mon 20 Jul 2026, 11:09 AM UPDATED: Mon 20 Jul 2026, 11:23 AM
Lionel Messi sat frozen under the New Jersey sky, teary-eyed, as Spain’s red tide crashed around him. A 1–0 extra-time win had just made La Roja world champions and, almost certainly, closed the book on Messi’s World Cup story.
However, before the cheer even settled in, Lamine Yamal slipped out of the celebrations and walked straight toward the man he’d grown up calling the greatest of all time.
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The cameras caught the embrace, which is now taking over the internet, showing Messi in tears and Yamal offering him a hug, in an exchange between two Barcelona No. 10s from different eras.
As of now, there is no official record of what was said. Perhaps that conversation belongs only to them.
But the teenager’s post-match words tell us exactly why he went over. “Messi is the best in history,” Yamal said afterwards, still in his Spain kit, describing the moment as “surreal”.
The backstory is what turns that hug into something so special. In a “crazy” twist Messi himself admitted he could barely process, the two were first photographed together in 2007, when a young Leo posed for a Barcelona-UNICEF shoot with a baby in his arms. That baby was Lamine Yamal. Nearly two decades later, Yamal, now a champion at 19, moved instinctively to console Messi, 39, on the night Argentina fell short.
Messi had spoken warmly about Yamal before the final, calling him a “fantastic player” capable of "something historic". On Sunday, Yamal completed that prophecy.
Spain bagged their second FIFA World Cup title with a 1-0 extra-time victory over Argentina, thanks to substitute Ferran Torres, who scored a goal in the 106th minute.
The winning shot started with Yamal, who passed to Pedro Porro on the right. Porro sent a cross into the box, where Torres arrived to slot the ball past Emiliano Martínez. Argentina were already down to 10 men after Enzo Fernández was sent off early in extra time.
However, in a tournament obsessed with wins and losses, the fleeting gesture by the 19-year-old footballer might just make for the most enduring, poetic image, of the young boy once in Messi’s arms becoming the man who eventually holds him up.
