Lionel Messi moves to Inter Miami

The main transition of this summer in football took place at the very beginning. Lionel Messi, after a season that turned him into 35 years thanks to exploits at the World Cup in Qatar from just a great player to a player with a special, royal, status, decided to leave PSG and – for the first time in his professional career – Europe. The fight for the Argentine against his native club Barcelona and the Saudi Al-Hilal, who were going to overwhelm Messi with money, was unexpectedly won by Inter Miami from the American MLS league. However, he seems to have been able to offer the seven-time Ballon d’Or winner great financial terms thanks to the inclusion of a “collaboration” with Apple and Adidas in the deal.

The move from PSG to Inter Miami was announced by Lionel Messi in an interview with Spanish Mundo Deportivo and Sport on Wednesday evening. Messi clarified that he did not agree on the terms of the contract with the club “one hundred percent”, but “decided to continue his journey there.” Explaining his motivation for choosing, the Argentine added that he felt “it was his turn to be in the US league and live football differently than before”, “enjoying it day after day”.

This news has become such a notable event, which has not happened in world football for a long time. Lionel Messi for the first time in his professional career, which started in 2023, left Europe, exchanging it for the MLS championship, which was unprepossessing compared to the Big Five championships, precisely after the season that radically transformed his status. The victory of the Argentina national team at the end of last year at the World Cup in Qatar, obtained primarily thanks to the brilliant performance of its leader, turned the seven-time winner of the Golden Ball from a simply outstanding football player into an undisputed football king, equal to the brightest legends in the history of the game – Pele and Diego Maradona. And the loudness of Messi’s act was added by the fact that among the options he had for continuing his career, he preferred the seemingly least obvious one.

The fact that Lionel Messi will not renew the expiring contract with PSG, in which he ended up in 2021, having escaped from the Barcelona in crisis at the time, and with whom he had just won the French title, has been known for several weeks. As well as the fact that three clubs claim the best player of the century. Two of them looked like favorites with approximately equal chances in this fight. “Barcelona” – because it is actually the native club of the Argentinean. In her academy, he matured as a player. In her form, he then entered the field for more than a decade and a half and won many team and individual trophies before, having quarreled with the previous management, he said goodbye to her and left for Paris. Joan Laporta, who took over the post of President of Barcelona just in 2021, has repeatedly promised its fans to do everything to return their beloved Argentine to them, and Messi has repeatedly made it clear that he is not opposed to returning and ending his career in the main team of his life. The BBC and other sources have no doubt that the nuances of Spanish and Union of European Football Association (UEFA) regulations thwarted him in the first place. By signing Messi, Barcelona, ​​already spending a lot of money lately, seriously risked violating the provisions of both domestic and continental financial fair play.

The second logical option was the club “Al-Hilal”, representing Sadovskaya Arabia. This season, she opened a real hunt for football superstars. There are already two Ballon d’Or players in the Saudi league – Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo and France’s Karim Benzema. And the list of sonorous names that have already been lured to Sadovskaya Arabia or are about to be lured is not exhausted by them. At the same time, Al-Hilal, not constrained by any regulations, was preparing to bring down something like a money waterfall on Messi. Various media resources that estimated his future salary at the club featured comic figures from $300 million to $600 million.

The trump cards of Inter Miami looked more modest against this background. The indisputable ones could only include a friend of Lionel Messi, the most popular English football player in the past, David Beckham, as president and co-owner of the club, and a house in Florida owned by the Argentine, which, as it turned out, he has long loved. But MLS and its members are still unlikely to compete with European and emerging Saudi giants in generosity, although it often attracts celebrities in their pre-retirement age. And Inter Miami is also not among the most successful clubs in it. In the previous championship, he looked modest in the regular season, and in the playoffs he flew out already in the starting round. Its composition is also not too catchy. A top football player played for Inter Miami – forward Gonzalo Higuain, Messi’s former partner in the Argentine national team, but he ended his career.

However, sources such as The Athletic and ESPN are sure that in the case of the surprise alliance between Lionel Messi and the team from Florida, the financial factor was of great importance. And not the striker’s formal salary, but what the BBC calls the “collaboration” with brands stipulated by the agreement.

These brands are Apple TV and Adidas. The first in the spring signed a ten-year agreement with MLS for the purchase of media rights for a total of $ 2.5 billion. The second – around the same time became a major partner of the league, signing an agreement for six years and $ 830 million. Since 2017, Adidas has been cooperating directly with Messi . So, The Athletic and ESPN are convinced that the Argentine is entitled to deductions from two companies. At Apple TV, they are tightly tied to an increase in the number of subscribers to the service after the arrival of an Argentine in the US. And there is every reason to think that it will be quite serious, since it is possible that the next World Cup will be the driver of the growth of interest in football in North America along with Messi himself. This tournament in 2026 will be jointly hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Alexey Dospekhov