{"id":1098914,"date":"2026-07-19T15:04:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T15:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1098914\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T15:04:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T15:04:20","slug":"messi-responds-to-iconic-photo-with-baby-yamal-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1098914\/","title":{"rendered":"Messi responds to iconic photo with baby Yamal | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/topic\/lionel-messi\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Lionel Messi<\/a> has described the viral photos of him with baby Lamine Yamal as &#8220;just crazy&#8221;, as destiny brings the pair together for the World Cup 2026 final between <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/topic\/argentina\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Argentina<\/a> and Spain on Sunday (19 July). <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;To be honest, that photo is just crazy because, well, that&#8217;s life, isn&#8217;t it?&#8221; Messi told Tom Brady during an onstage appearance in New York.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I had my photo taken with him when he was a baby, and here we are today, the two of us going up against each other in a World Cup. It really is crazy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The photoshoot came as part of a charity calendar made by local newspaper Diario Sport and UNICEF in 2007.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lionel Messi has described the viral photos of him with baby Lamine Yamal as &#8220;just crazy&#8221;, as destiny&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1098915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3940],"tags":[10105,299478,299479,299477,4080,31481,47671,393,271709,50024,77,1512,19560,75473,299476,44888,252298,11627,77777,47681,150535,59502,2249,257969,10031,93,6573,16,15,271711,659,255559],"class_list":["post-1098914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-argentina","tag-argentina-national-soccer-team","tag-argentina-national-team","tag-atlanta-georgia","tag-celebrities","tag-coach","tag-color-image","tag-england","tag-england-national-soccer-team","tag-england-national-team","tag-entertainment","tag-fifa","tag-fifa-world-cup","tag-fifa-world-cup-2026","tag-georgia-us-state","tag-horizontal","tag-international-team-soccer","tag-looking","tag-manager","tag-match-sport","tag-mercedes-benz-stadium","tag-national-team","tag-photography","tag-semifinal-round","tag-soccer","tag-sport","tag-thomas-tuchel","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-kingdom-national-team","tag-usa","tag-world-sports-championship"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1098914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1098915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1098914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1098914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1098914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}