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Best player. The best team. Inter Miami's Lionel Messi is an undeniable force in Major League Soccer right now, and he's gaining momentum like no one the league has ever seen.
The 38-year-old Argentine star – and captain of the MLS Cup champions – became the first back-to-back Most Valuable Player in MLS history and was announced on Tuesday as the winner of the league's top individual award this year.
It's another first in Messi's seemingly never-ending list of career accomplishments and was widely expected, almost assumed, after he scored a league-best 29 goals and 19 assists in the regular season.
He also becomes the league's second two-time MVP, joining Preki, who won the award in 1997 and 2003. All other winners are one-time MVP winners.
“He's been fantastic all season, both with numbers and with dedication,” Inter Miami coach and longtime Messi teammate Javier Mascherano said.
Messi has played barely half of Inter Miami's regular season games in 2024, raising some doubts about whether he deserves the MVP award.
Last year he won a closed vote. There was no debate this year.
Messi received 70.4% of the total votes, the highest since Toronto's Sebastian Giovinco in 2015. Second place went to Anders Dreyer from San Diego with 11.2, Evander from Cincinnati (4.8).
“I think he's a unicorn among unicorns,” MLS commissioner Don Garber said of Messi while attending an Inter Miami match early in this season's playoffs. “You know, there's something about his personality. He thinks about the game like no one else. His intensity and desire to win is what makes him the greatest player of all time. There are a lot of really competitive players, but he has a special sauce, this dynamic that makes him so focused on what he needs to do to win games.”
Inter Miami beat Vancouver Whitecaps 3-1 in the MLS Cup final.
The award joins dozens of other individual accolades in Messi's career, including eight Ballon d'Or titles, eight Pichichi Trophies as La Liga's top scorer, six La Liga best player awards, three FIFA Men's Player of the Year awards, three UEFA Men's Player of the Year wins, two FIFA World Cup Golden Balls and no less than 15 awards as Argentina's best player in a given year. He has also been involved in winning 47 trophies for club and country, including the 2022 World Cup, making him the most decorated player men's football has ever seen.
“The reality is,” Mascherano said before the end of the regular season, “that Leo dispels all doubts.”
Messi becomes the sixth player in MLS history to win MVP and league title in the same season. Of the previous five, only Atlanta United's Josef Martinez in 2018 won the MVP, the title and the Golden Boot as the league's top scorer in the same year, another hat-trick of sorts that Messi achieved in 2025.
Indeed, there was no one like him – in MLS for sure, and, quite possibly, anywhere.
Forget back-to-back MVP wins. There have only been four players in MLS history—Carlos Valderrama in 1996 and 1997, Marco Echeverri in 1998 and 1999, David Villa in 2016 and 2017, and Martinez in 2018 and 2019—who won the award in one year and then even became an MVP finalist the following season.
And Messi has no plans to leave Miami anytime soon. He signed a three-year extension, meaning he will be there when Inter Miami – a franchise whose value has soared since his arrival two and a half years ago – opens its new stadium near Miami International Airport next season.
“When Lionel Messi chose MLS as his favorite league, it was a turning point – not just for Inter Miami, but for our entire sport in North America,” Garber said when the contract was announced. “Since then, we have witnessed something truly historic: the greatest player of all time brought our league to the attention of the world. We are very pleased that Leo has decided to stay and continue his career at Inter Miami.
The phenomenon of back-to-back MVPs has happened in each of the other major professional sports leagues in the United States many times in the past, with the most recent instance of each occurring relatively recently.
In Major League Baseball, Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees have won the National League and American League MVP awards, respectively, in each of the last two seasons; Ohtani also won the AL MVP award with the Los Angeles Angels in 2023.
Aja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces has won the WNBA MVP award in each of the last two years. Denver's Nikola Jokic was the last NBA player to win back-to-back MVPs in 2021 and 2022. Aaron Rodgers, then of Green Bay, won back-to-back NFL MVP awards in 2020 and 2021, and Washington's Alex Ovechkin won the NHL Hart Trophy in 2008 and 2009 for the last performance by anyone. claiming this award for several years in a row.
But never in the MLS—until now.
