ABOUTK., raise your hands. How many of you knew that Lionel Messi is a global superstar who promised to spend the next three years in the United States – just completed the best individual season in Major League Soccer history?
Be honest.
Most people won't be surprised by this news. You know the greatest soccer player of all time ends his career in North America playing for that team that has pink kits that are scattered around the planet like beautiful toxic slime mold. Contextless moments float past the periphery of your consciousness, floating through the algorithm, and you heard a rumor that the kids started calling Messi “the oak player” because he scores two goals in every game. Which, yes, of course he does. He's Messi.
Even among MLS faithful, Messi's campaign seems strangely underrated. He won the Golden Boot and tied for most assists despite missing a quarter of the season, setting new records for non-penalty goals and goal efficiency. According to a leading study by American Soccer Analysis, goals added By that metric, he added twice as much value as the average player than second-place Denis Bouanga and left Carlos Vela's 2019 campaign, the previous best MLS campaign ever, in the dust. Despite all this, there were rumors around the league as recently as last month that perhaps San Diego's Anders Dreyer or Cincinnati's Evander would be more deserving of the MVP.
This brings us to a more important question: what if Messi breaks up MLS? spit?
Supporters of rival teams have reasons not to do this. After the excitement of meeting him in person (or selling a ticket to pay for the rest of the season) had worn off, all that was left was a resigned acknowledgment of his greatness and a growing resentment of his intrusion into a niche of fandom. The same league in which canceled fan favorite podcast And replaced writers by AI may still find enough room in the budget to plaster Messi's face everywhere, but a competitive balance that used to be a source of pride went out the window when one team spent more than twice the average wage bill to organize the Barcelona Legends Tour.
There is also plenty of evidence that the average American sports fan is not using Messi as a gateway to MLS as often as expected. League executives once predicted that Messi mania and next year's World Cup will “double our fan base by 2026, then we'll double it and double it again.” Instead, average regular season attendance fell 5.5% year over year as MLS continues give way to European competitions during the American football boom. On Thursday, MLS boasted that overall weekly viewing figures for all matches were up 29%, but that could easily be attributed to an increase in streaming and international linear deals the league signed between the 2024 and 2025 seasons.
Google Search Messi remains behind Cristiano Ronaldo in the United States, who plays in Saudi Arabia, and spent the summer behind WNBA player Caitlin Clarke, who has burst into the national sports conversation in a way that MLS can only envy.
Yes, the rest of the world still loves Messi. Millions of people watch his highlights from Inter Miami and click on his name in the headlines. No, they don't seem to have turned into die-hard MLS fans. League Commissioner Don Garber suggested several ambiguous numbers earlier this year to support the claim that viewership was up “nearly 50% over last year”, then added that it was not “where we needed to be.” While Messi's contract reportedly included a portion of streaming revenue from the MLS Season Pass on Apple, the league announced this week that it would stage playoff games. free for all Apple TV subscriberssuggesting that the model didn't quite work.
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If there was any hope that this whole “Lionel Messi, Florida Man” thing would become a broader cultural phenomenon, there hasn't been much sign of it yet. Ted Lasso and Welcome to Wrexham brought football into the entertainment mainstream, with 418,000 and 24,000 reviews on IMDb respectively. Apple's glossy documentary series “Messi Meets America” 458 reviews. No, it's not a missing comma.
The problem is that there isn't much story here. Messi supposed dominate MLS. When he succeeds, it is because he plays in what the world still considers, albeit unfairly, a “retirement league.” When he and his Barcelona buddies sometimes struggle (Inter Miami finished just third in the Eastern Conference this year), what do you expect? They are practically pensioners. No narrative to capture the imagination, just a weekly clip otherworldly goals they seem to exist outside of any actual competitive context, even to competition fans.
May be, MLS the playoffs could still add some spice to this experiment. America loves knockout tournaments, and the closest Messi has come to conquering the world's biggest sports market was those magical first few weeks when Inter Miami won the largely meaningless League Cup in 2023. Or maybe at next summer's World Cup he'll turn back the clock and remind people that he still has every minute left on the pitch to watch on TV.
At this point, it seems more likely, even after a contract extension, that Messi's tenure in Miami will go down in history as a half-forgotten footnote to a storied career, leaving MLS with a few new records but no real transformative changes.
