By Paul Tenorio, Philip Cardenas and Paul Maurer
major league soccer and intermiami they are solidifying the details around the possible signing of the Argentine superstar Lionel Messi.
Multiple sources briefed on the negotiations said there is growing hope that Inter Miami can close a deal to bring the World Cup winner to MLS as soon as this summer. Those sources also warned that confidence in a deal with Messi has fluctuated from week to week and even from day to day. All sources for this story were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing negotiations.
A source briefed on the league’s high-level discussions said MLS executives have been told Messi’s decision is up to Inter Miami or Barcelona and that joining a Saudi Arabian club is “not under consideration.” That same source mentioned a possible date for Messi’s MLS debut, should he sign: Inter Miami’s League Cup match against Mexican team Cruz Azul on July 21, which is currently taking place. at Inter Miami’s DRV PNK Stadium.
summer transfer window in the athletic…
Reports of Messi’s impending decision have emerged from Europe, South America and Asia, and have run the gamut this week, but the momentum appears to have shifted towards Inter Miami in recent days.
“The league has gotten very creative with all of this,” an MLS stakeholder said of a potential deal to bring Messi to MLS on Tuesday morning. “Everything is on the table.”
MLS’s offer to Messi involves contributions from the league’s two largest business partners.
Multiple sources involved in or briefed on the league’s high-level discussions said earlier this week that MLS and Apple have discussed offering Messi a share of the revenue generated by new subscribers to MLS Season Pass, the streaming package for the league on Apple TV+. Both sides see Messi’s potential involvement in Major League Soccer as a blessing; Apple and MLS signed a 10-year, $2.5 billion deal this spring. On Tuesday, Apple revealed that a four-part documentary series chronicling Messi’s five World Cup appearances will stream on Apple TV+.
Adidas, which is among MLS’s largest corporate sponsors, has prepared its own potential deal to attract Messi to the United States, multiple sources briefed on those plans said. the athletic on Tuesday. Messi is being offered a profit-sharing deal with the sportswear giant, those sources said, which would entail the player receiving a share of any increase in Adidas profits as a result of his involvement with MLS.
Adidas has been associated with MLS since the league’s inception in 1996. The two sides renewed their partnership earlier this year, signing an $830 million, six-year extension through 2030. The German manufacturer supplies kits to all 29 teams in the league. MLS and also designs the league’s official ball and is the league’s official shoe sponsor.
Messi himself has a long-standing relationship with Adidas, which began in 2006. In 2017, he signed a lifetime shoe endorsement deal with the company.
League-wide sources who have been briefed on the talks varied in their level of confidence that Inter Miami and MLS could win the race to sign Messi. One source ranked it 50-50. Another said that even Inter Miami team executives are divided on whether they believe it will happen. Negotiations are being led by Inter Miami owners Jorge and José Mas, those sources said.
Messages left for spokespersons for Inter Miami and Jorge and José Mas were not returned at the time of publication.
Messi’s deal would likely include the option to buy a percentage of an MLS team at the end of his time as a player in MLS, multiple sources briefed on the discussions said. That would at least resemble David Beckham’s contract with the los angeles galaxy, which gave him the option to buy an MLS expansion team for $25 million. That option eventually became Inter Miami.
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Miami has been waiting to sign Messi almost since its inception. When the expansion squad was officially announced in 2018, Messi posted a video on social media congratulating Beckham and saying, “Who knows, maybe in a few years you can call me.” The club has worked to build connections with Messi and even has ties to his longtime club, Barcelona. Miami’s commercial director is Xavier Asensi, former commercial director of Barcelona and a member of the executive board of the Spanish club. In April, Beckham, who ended his playing career at Paris Saint-Germain, visited the club’s training facilities and had a photo taken with Messi, fueling rumors about the possible arrival of the seven-time Ballon d’Or winner at the MLS.
If Messi comes to Miami, he could be greeted by a familiar face. Multiple sources involved in or briefed on the search for Miami coaches confirmed that the athletic that preliminary talks have been held between Inter Miami and Gerardo “Tata” Martino, who is currently out of a job after leaving his position with the Mexico national team in December.
Miami is currently led by interim head coach Javier Morales. The club’s previous manager, Phil Neville, was sacked last week.
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Martino, 60, trained Messi and Argentina to back-to-back appearances in the Copa América final, including the 2016 edition that took place in the US. Martino also managed Messi at Barcelona from 2013-2014.
Martino won an MLS Cup as coach of atlanta united in 2018. Despite disagreements with Atlanta’s sports department regarding player signings, Martino led the two-year-old club to a league title in 2018, his second and final season in MLS. His influence on player recruitment was critical to Atlanta United’s immediate success.
A source close to Martino, who requested anonymity due to the nature of their relationship, said the athletic that Messi and Martino got along when they worked together. They weren’t close and they weren’t distant either, the source said. Seven years later, both the player and the coach have matured in different ways. Messi, once considered a failure with his national team, is now a World Cup champion. Martino is coming off a tumultuous four-year campaign with Mexico with great interest in returning to MLS. Inter Miami declined to comment on possible coaching candidates.
“MLS is my weakness,” Martino said the athletic in April. “I was part of an extraordinary project with Atlanta United that had a clear direction, a lot of communication and similar goals that were set very quickly and executed. After coaching in MLS, I was drawn to it. I like the league. The possibility of returning to MLS is always there.”
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MLS Commissioner Don Garber said the athletic in March it would probably take a creative deal, like the one Beckham had when he joined the LA Galaxy in 2007, for the league to land Messi.
“You are dealing with perhaps the most special player in the history of the game,” Garber said of Messi. “So when there are rumors that he’s connected to Miami, that’s great. And if it could happen, it would be fantastic for MLS, it would be fantastic for Messi and his family, and like everything with us, we try to take advantage of every opportunity. I can’t give more details than that because we don’t have them.”
Messi signed a two-year contract with psg last season after spending the previous 17 years at Barcelona. The French side won their 11th Ligue 1 title this season, with Messi scoring 16 goals with 16 assists in 32 league games. He added four goals in seven games in Champions League play. PSG reached the round of 16 of the Champions League in 2022-23 before losing to Bayern Munich.
last month was suspended for two weeks by PSG for making an unauthorized trip to Saudi Arabia. Saudi club Al-Hilal is also vying for Messi’s signature, having offered a deal supposedly worth over $400 million per year.
Inter Miami, founded in 2018, is co-owned by Beckham. He went 14-6-14 last season, finishing sixth in the Eastern Conference, and is 5-0-11 this year. Even before kicking a ball, Inter Miami was expected to finally field an all-star team, an MLS version of the Galacticos. This was mainly due to comments that Mas has made publicly.
“David and I have been working very hard, we have aspirations to bring the best players here and Leo Messi is a generational player, possibly the greatest player of all time,” Mas told the Miami Herald in 2021. “I am optimistic that Messi will do it. He will play in the Inter Miami jersey because I believe he will complete the legacy of the greatest player of our generation and fulfill the ambitions of the Inter Miami owners to build a world-class team.”
The reality has been very different. Yes, Miami has presented the winner of the World Cup Blaise Matuidi and former Argentina and real Madrid striker Gonzalo Higuain. But the players like it Cristiano RonaldoJames Rodriguez, Radamel Falcao, antoine griezmanMarco Verratti edison cavani, Luis Suarez, Sergio Busquets and others have become rumors or agreements that do not correspond to reality. Inter Miami needs a big star or the South Florida fans won’t show up on game day.
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“This city wants to be excited, you know what I mean?” Neville said in February. “I think this club is far from working class. It has to have a bit of glitz and glamour. It has to aim for the moon instead of the stars. That comes with the location we are in. The people of Miami want to be excited. They want South Beach.”
It didn’t take long for Neville to see if Messi would, in fact, come to MLS. However, he did have an opinion on the impact his signing would have on the league.
“I think it’s bigger than Inter Miami,” Neville said. “It’s big for MLS. I think this would probably be the biggest signing ever. I think that if we have the opportunity to sign Messi and if he comes to this football club, and I don’t think we can hide from the fact that we are probably in the stadium, probably in the hunt, we have to be prepared for that. ”.
(Photo: Aurelien Meunier/Getty Images)