It is not uncommon for historically great athletes to sign with a team differing greatly from the team(s) they’d played with throughout the primes of their careers. Wayne Gretzky, “The Great One,” finished out his career with the New York Rangers after a lengthy tenure with the Edmonton Oilers and Los Angeles Kings, Michael Jordan joined the Washington Wizards after 14 Hall of Fame years with the Chicago Bulls, Tom Brady suited up for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after winning six Super Bowls with the New England Patriots, and Babe Ruth completed his career with the Boston Braves after fundamentally changing the game of baseball with the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees.
Soccer players who have made waves overseas have a similar albeit shorter history of making their way to the Major League Soccer (MLS). Whether making an impact in the American market or to find a nice place to retire, European soccer players come to America in the twilight of thier career. Didier Drogba played for the Montreal Impact and Phoenix Rising, and David Beckham played for the LA Galaxy, for example.
As soccer is undoubtedly the world’s most popular sport, Lionel Messi’s departure from the European club Paris Saint-Germain has caused much more media frenzy than the team switching of the North American icons stated above. This craze is further highlighted by Messi’s decision not to join his old club of FC Barcelona nor accept the record-breaking three year, $1.6 billion offer from the Saudi Professional League club Al-Hilal.
He instead chose to play for Inter Miami in the U.S., where soccer is the fourth most watched sport. Inter Miami did not offer him the most lucrative nor longest contract — 2.5 years, $150 million — and he is not entering a market that cannot even be compared to Barcelona or Paris in terms of soccer/football viewership.
However, the American market has promoted Messi to the moon. In the wake of Beckham and Drogba’s careers among others, it seems that Lionel Messi might be the man the MLS and U.S. deem fit to elevate soccer in the eyes of the American populace and U.S. soccer in the eyes of the world. American men’s soccer has historically been second-rate, qualifying in just half of all FIFA World Cups and finishing no higher than third place. The MLS, as well, is not considered among the world’s top leagues.
So in an attempt to increase the popularity of soccer in America, before this season the MLS signed a deal with Apple TV+, who will be streaming their games for the next decade, including all of Messi’s games with Inter Miami. Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr said that Messi’s first week had “the three most-watched matches ever on MLS Season Pass, with viewers in almost 100 countries and regions around the world.” If Messi had not yet been identified as a legend in the U.S., promoting him as such and watching him more closely in the upcoming seasons surely will.
Really, legends might think they deserve one more day in the sun, separated from the pressure that “being home” and having to be your prime self every day brings. For Messi, there isn’t a massive European and otherwise international web of fans he has to replicate his Barcelona years for. America is simply happy to have him and has tried their best to make him feel welcome. And who knows, maybe this will be the best he’s ever played. It’s not like the rest of the world isn’t still watching.
