“I think Miami needs a star,” David Beckham said in 2018 when his new Major League Soccer franchise was born. “Miami would expect us to bring in a star. That’s what we plan on doing.”
Five years later, with Inter Miami currently playing its fourth season in MLS, Beckham and co-owners, brothers Jorge and Jose Mas, delivered the biggest star of them all. Arguably the greatest player of all time. The World Cup winner, Lionel Messi.
Messi could be a catalyst, building momentum for the sport in the United States in the three years before they co-host the 2026 World Cup with Canada and Mexico.
Before that, the USA will also host the 2024 Copa America, meaning Messi could not only play his final game in club football in the States but likely his final major international tournament too.
These are big moments for Messi at the end of his playing career – he’ll be 36 by the time he’s eligible to play his first game for Miami – but they are potentially even bigger moments for football in the USA.
The move has echoes of Beckham, who joined LA Galaxy in 2007, and of Pele, who was drawn to the American soccer package at New York Cosmos in the old NASL in the 1970s.
Messi’s move will partly be judged, whether he likes it or not, on the growth of soccer in America during his time there. Propelling it to the front and centre of the conversation in American sports, rather than an appendage.
The depth of influence Messi has will depend on whether his impact goes beyond the superficial. Will the enthusiasm end when he leaves or will Messi’s magic see domestic soccer strengthen across the nation?
At the moment, North American men’s professional sports consist primarily of the ‘Big Four’ major leagues – basketball (NBA), baseball (MLB), American football (NFL) and ice hockey (NHL).
MLS is not always taken as seriously as these and is often an afterthought in general sports coverage, if it is thought of at all.
Since Messi’s announcement, though, it has featured regularly as a main story. No-one can overlook the biggest name in world sports. That this big name happens to be a soccer player is significant.
Anticipation of Messi’s arrival will be the first stage of his American story, when the effect he’s having on the game there will be seen in real time. Inter Miami’s social media following has already skyrocketed beyond those of many NHL, MLB and NFL teams.
Cumulative ticket sales for their games from July to the end of the season which, unlike the European leagues, runs within a calendar year rather than across two, have seen an almost 28-fold increase since Messi’s announcement.
Tickets for the NBA Finals in Miami last week cost less than those for Messi’s possible debut against Cruz Azul in the Leagues Cup. Team line-up announcements are already being met with a barrage of comments, most asking ‘where’s Messi?’
The move will be good for MLS, especially in the short term while Messi is there – but being good for MLS isn’t necessarily the same as being good for soccer in America. Much will depend on how much of the excitement and interest filters down to the grassroots.
That can be difficult when there is no connection between the leagues at different levels across the country. There is no direct continuation from the NASL of Pele to the MLS of Beckham and Messi, and no link between MLS and the country’s other pro-soccer league, USL.
Neither is there promotion and relegation, though this is handy for Miami who currently sit bottom of the Eastern Conference before Messi’s arrival.
If Messi’s impact on the sport in the US is to go beyond the league in which he plays, MLS might have to open up somewhat, paying some mind to other soccer organisations running parallel to and below it – and it may benefit from doing so.
Its rules and regulations have helped forge steadier foundations than previous pro-soccer leagues, while single-entity single-mindedness has facilitated self-preservation, but it might now be time to remove some of the shackles. Messi’s arrival could encourage that.
The league has already needed some flexibility to attract Messi in the first place. A combination of factors, including a new broadcast deal with Apple TV starting this season, a shared kit supplier in Adidas and a Beckham-owned club in Miami – a city where Messi himself owns property – have provided favourable circumstances.
It is fitting that Beckham is the owner bringing Messi to MLS as his own arrival as a player in 2007 changed the game. To facilitate Beckham’s signing, the league created the ‘designated player rule’ – sometimes referred to as the Beckham rule – which allows clubs to acquire up to three players whose wages can exceed the salary cap.
Beckham’s rule now facilitates his team’s move for Messi, the details of which are yet to be disclosed but, as expected, there will be more to it than just a standard designated player contract.
Messi’s added extras will take to new levels what MLS and its partners can offer a player. It will be reminiscent of the landmark deal NBA star Michael Jordan signed with Nike in 1984 when Nike took the unprecedented step of offering Jordan a percentage of sales.
As well as deals with Adidas, and Apple for a four-part documentary, there are rumours Messi could take a club ownership stake, while there is talk he could get a percentage of sign-ups to Apple TV’s MLS Season Pass.
To compete with the billions on offer in Saudi Arabia, MLS had to think outside the box. If Messi’s presence is to transcend the league and impact American soccer as a whole, MLS might have to think outside MLS.
Asking one player to change the landscape of a sport in a region so large and varied is an impossible task. Soccer is not unpopular in the United States, it just isn’t as religiously followed domestically as it is in most of the rest of the world.
Fans might obsessively follow the national team or a club from Europe or Mexico, but the structure of American club soccer on a national level doesn’t rouse the same mass intrigue or devotion. Pele or Messi increasing the popularity of soccer in the US is not the same as increasing the popularity of the domestic game.
America has its own sports and its own ‘football’ adapted from the same unruly 19th-century English games as association football. Overtaking them culturally is a huge task.
Even Pele couldn’t turn a nation of (American) football fans into a nation of soccer fans, though in some ways he and Beckham laid the groundwork for Messi to give it a go.
Messi’s arrival will mean higher attendances, global attention and increased awareness of MLS, but for the effects to be permanent in American soccer, something will need to be built at a local level on the ground on the back of this momentous, magic move.
