39 настай супер од Лионель Месси Аргентины шигшээ багийн хамтаар дэлхийн аваргын финалд дахин шалгарч, түүхэн амжилтаа үргэлжлүүлж байна.
Лхагва гарагт болсон хагас шигшээ тоглолтын шүгэл дуугарах үед Месси сэтгэл хөдлөлөө барьж дийлэлгүй газарт сөхрөн унасан нь түүний энэ амжилтын үнэ цэнийг илтгэх шиг болсон юм. Гурван жилийн өмнө түүнийг Интер Майами руу шилжихэд олон хүн карьерынх нь төгсгөл гэж дүгнэж байсан ч тэрээр MLS-д байх хугацаандаа ур чадвараа хадгалж, шигшээ багийнхаа төлөө өндөр түвшинд тоглосоор ирлээ. Интер Майамигийн дасгалжуулагчийн штаб болон удирдлагын зүгээс Мессиг талбай дээрх ялагдашгүй хүсэл эрмэлзэлтэй, ямар ч тэмцээнд өндөр хариуцлагатай ханддаг “өрсөлдөөнт араатан” хэмээн тодорхойлсон юм.
Мессигийн энэхүү амжилт нь MLS-ийг зөвхөн “тэтгэвэртээ гарсан тоглогчдын лиг” гэх буруу ойлголтыг үгүй хийж байна. Лигийн комиссар Дон Гарбер Мессиг талбайд төдийгүй дэлхийн тавцанд шилдэг нь хэвээр байгааг онцлоод, энэ нь лигийн стратегийн зөв алхам байсныг баталлаа. Өдгөө MLS-д Сон Хён Мин, Томас Мюллер, Марко Ройс, Роберт Левандовски, Антуан Гризманн зэрэг дэлхийн одод тоглож байгаа нь лигийн чанар, нэр хүндийг өсгөж байна.
Аргентины шигшээ баг ирэх ням гарагт болох финалд Бразилын 1958, 1962 оны амжилтыг давтаж, дэлхийн аварга цолоо хамгаалах зорилготойгоор талбайд гарна. Мессигийн хувьд энэ нь өөрийн карьер болон MLS-ийн ирээдүйд хийсэн томоохон хөрөнгө оруулалт, ялалтын дараах дахин нэгэн том сорилт болох юм.
Дэлгэрэнгүй эх сурвалжийг харах
Эх сурвалжийг нээх ↓
When the final whistle sounded on Wednesday afternoon, Lionel Messi dropped to his knees and let out a scream. At age 39, improbably, he was going back to the World Cup final with Argentina.
It was just three years ago that Messi announced to the world he was going to Inter Miami and MLS. The decision quickly led to some claiming the Argentine was off to semi-retirement.
Barcelona put out a passive aggressive statement saying president Joan Laporta “understood and respected Messi’s decision to want to compete in a league with fewer demands, further away from the spotlight and the pressure he has been subject to in recent years.” English commentator Chris Sutton said on the “It’s All Kicking Off” podcast that Messi was “washed up” like Cristiano Ronaldo and that “they’re not the players which they once were.”
“If he had serious ambition, he would have gone back to Barcelona,” he added.
Now Messi is in position to win the Golden Ball as best player in a second consecutive World Cup. And on Sunday he will lead an Argentina side trying to become the first since Brazil in 1958 and 1962 to repeat as world champions.
For MLS, Messi’s World Cup success is an enormous help in closing the perception gap between how global football fans and stakeholders see their league and where it actually sits. For Messi, it’s proof of what he said in the days leading into his arrival in Miami.
“My mentality and my head will not change,” he told Argentinian television show “Llave a la Eternidad.” “And I will try to give my best for myself and for my new club and continue to perform at the highest level.”
Lionel Messi leaps as part of his emphatic goal celebration vs. Egypt in the World Cup round of 16 (Carlos Barria / Reuters)
The discourse around Messi’s MLS decision failed to acknowledge the reality in which Messi operates.
It goes beyond his hypercompetitive nature,though that quickly became as famous in Miami as it has everywhere else in his career. “He’s a competitive beast,” Inter Miami owner Jorge Mas told me for my book The Messi Effect: How the Global Legend Changed the Future of American Soccer. “All he wants to do is win.”
Messi knows that his legacy is constantly being judged. Playing in MLS didn’t change that. If he scores a goal or doesn’t, if Miami won a trophy or lost one, it weighed on his place among the greatest in the sport’s history. There was no escaping that scrutiny.
When Messi plays, and even when he doesn’t, it is a global headline. He didn’t appear in a friendly in Hong Kong in 2024, and it sparked an international incident. His absence in Vancouver sparked lawsuits. Messi managed seven minutes in a 6-0 preseason friendly loss to Ronaldo’s Al-Nassr in 2024, a game in which Ronaldo didn’t play, and still globally it was a rebuke not just on MLS and Miami, but on him.
Al-Nassr humiliate Messi’s Inter Miami as Cristiano Ronaldo watches from stands read The Guardian’s headline that day.
After that game, Messi reprimanded his teammates in the locker room.
“We should want to play these games,” Messi seethed. “If you guys don’t wake up, we’ll go home now.”
Inter Miami assistant Javier Morales, who translated the speech to the team, said it was a unique window into a peerless mentality.
“From my point of view, he is a person that is insatiable,” Morales said. “He is never gonna get full of winning or titles, because that is in the way that he lives his life. He doesn’t recognize a difference between a La Liga or MLS title. Of course, he understands the difference, right? But he wants to win. It doesn’t matter where he is.
“We’re talking about a player that has won the World Cup and won more titles than anyone in the world. He wants to win. If he is playing a small-sided game in training and he doesn’t win, he’s pissed. Or if he loses playing cards, or two-touch or whatever. He always wants to win.
“It’s the thing that feeds him. But at the same time he is never going to get full.”
It’s partly why Messi waited so long to confirm he was going to play for Argentina at the World Cup. Messi didn’t want to show up and just be there. He wanted to be Messi. To impact games and to help the team win. He spent all season preparing to be able to do just that for Argentina, taking extra training sessions and dominating internal competitions at Miami as he ramped up for the tournament.
It was a testament to that mentality, but also a nod to what Miami provided him that he might not have gotten anywhere else.
“Soccer, it became difficult,” Messi said on an Apple documentary about his arrival in the U.S. “But I was always happy playing soccer and being able to have fun, like when I was a kid. And I can keep doing it here, which was one of the reasons why I made the decision.
“To enjoy again what I had lost.”
Lionel Messi and Inter Miami hoist the 2025 MLS Cup trophy (Nathan Ray Seebeck / Imagn Images)
MLS has battled to rid itself of the retirement league moniker, even as it presently welcomes an influx of older players into the league.
“Criticism is easy, courage is hard,” MLS commissioner Don Garber said. “It was courageous to sign Leo, and it was courageous for him to come to Major League Soccer. To walk away from what could have been a payday that you know would have been transformational for generations of Messis, and show the world that he not only could win a championship in Miami, but he can perform in the World Cup and be the best player on the field. And he’s 39 years old.
“This idea that MLS was a retirement league was lazy, because we would sign two or three or four players that were at the end of their careers, and we’d sign hundreds of them in their mid-20s that people weren’t paying attention to. So I’ve learned after 28 years to tone out the noise, stare forward, stare down the naysayers, and lean into strategy.”
That strategy is now built around starpower.
Messi’s enormous commercial success, and his clear appeal to fans in the U.S., prompted numerous other teams to target bigger names that might impact their local markets. That led to the biggest rush in older talent since 2015, when MLS welcomed players like Kaká, Frank Lampard, Andrea Pirlo, David Villa, Steven Gerrard and Didier Drogba — all to differing levels of success.
The stars now dot MLS from coast to coast, from Son Heung-min (LAFC), Thomas Müller (Vancouver Whitecaps) and Marco Reus (LA Galaxy) to Robert Lewandowski (Chicago Fire), Antoine Griezmann (Orlando City) and, likely soon, Casemiro (Inter Miami).
It is an acknowledgement that MLS very much still needs the big names to drive relevance, especially as more fans consume sports through individual players. That pivot to lean into stars is also being paired with an acknowledgement that the league needs further investment in overall quality. League owners and executives are weighing changes to roster rules that would allow for more efficient spending, a change that could significantly drive quality, especially when paired with a calendar flip that frees MLS to more fully participate in the transfer market.
All of it is now strengthened off the back of Messi’s World Cup performance.
The league’s post-World Cup marketing slogan — “Thanks world, we’ll take it from here” — is maybe overdelivering on what MLS is ready for in 2026. But the league can now say with a high degree of confidence that players can come to MLS and still thrive at the highest levels, something that no other star before or quite like Messi has been able to deliver for the league.
It’s the fulfillment of the promise Messi made when he arrived, and a rebuke of those retirement claims —and any others that may well come in the future.
