MESSI CARRIES ON IN AMERICA, NEARING 37, AS EVERYONE WEARS HIS PINK SHIRT
He remains the most commanding soccer player of his lifetime, or any, and it’s stunning as he leads the MLS in scoring with Inter Miami, where his magic still exceeds that of other awe-inspiring stars
The jerseys are pink and divine, global beyond culture, whether it’s Red Bull or Apple or Airbnb. Could they end the Israel-Hamas war and pause the presidential gore on our soil? Clothing wear isn’t intended to be so cherished, in a selective Adidas tone called Pantone 1895C, and it has been sold in massive quantities for Lionel Messi.
We continue to see it everywhere almost a year after he joined Inter Miami, where Vogue says his uniform defines the times. In America, we are immersed in a women’s basketball player, Caitlin Clark, and a Japanese baseball player, Shohei Ohtani. Those are unique experiences, but in a world scope, neither compares to Messi. He is the most commanding soccer player of this or any lifetime, and who knew he’d be in such demand in our states, where we still view his sport as an NFL diversion? He turns 37 next month. He performs almost a decade younger.
“At his age, he’s still trying to improve himself,” said running mate Luis Suarez, “and you can feel the joy of what he’s doing for soccer.”
We like blustery football. We like the basketball postseason. We like baseball, sort of. Now we watch the MLS, which Messi dominates with an aura that deflates opponents from even bothering to defend him. He is only 5 feet 7. He says he’s too aged to play in the 2026 World Cup, meaning his tour of our cities is his last as an active player. So the other teams view him as a godlike figure and prefer to stop him for a selfie. “He likes to do that, where he picks up speed through a wall pass, and I become like a bouncer, in a sense,” midfielder Julian Gressel said. “We get him into space and move forward.”
His coach, Tata Martino, explains the phenomenon with simple tastes. “Messi makes the difference, always,” he says.
Said New York Red Bulls coach Sandro Schwarz, who watched him score a goal and add five assists last week: “This is the biggest problem against this quality: when you have open space against Lionel Messi.”
Open space is torture. He leads the league in scoring with 12 goals and 13 assists, for a franchise that leads the Eastern Conference with an 8-2-3 record. His show is so pleasurable, he makes headlines only on infrequent occasions when he’s rankled. Last weekend in Montreal, Messi was fouled and held his knee. The league has a new rule requiring injured players to sit on a sldeline for two minutes, which is silly in a sport where everyone fakes an ache or pain. When he was asked to leave briefly, an angry Messi saw a camera and expressed his concern.
“These types of rules … it’s going bad,” he said.
Going bad? Is he upset about the middle-of-the-road dregs of a league that doesn’t remotely compare to his international journeys? Like the MLS days of David Beckham, who brought him to Florida, Messi realizes he’s on an older plateau and continues to overmatch every player in his sight. Is the league too boring for him? I recall a night in France when I paid secondary ticket prices to watch him play for Paris-St. Germain. Astonishingly, he rarely touched the ball as a third option behind Kylian Mbappe and Neymar. Messi wasn’t a happy camper and joined Inter Miami, in a league where Pele arrived at 34 in the mid-‘70s and helped the U.S. soccer cause with Franz Beckenbauer, Carlos Alberto and Johan Cruyff. He loves living by the water in a gated community in Fort Lauderdale, but he still has to play in smaller stadiums across the nation.
He knows where he is. The 2022 World Cup is secure in Argentina, after he scored seven goals — two against Mbappe in a rousing final — and he graduated to a twilight. “I said it several times and it is a reality: I will always try to compete to the maximum and I am the first to know when I can be there and when I can’t,” Messi said this year. “I am also aware that I went to a lesser league, but a lot happens because of the personal and the way one faces it and competes.”
Said Martino, who wants nothing in Messi’s way: “There are situations that must be revised. The player deserved a yellow card, which would mean Messi would have never left the field for two minutes. As I understand it, the team that suffered the foul was punished. Ultimately, it was us that lost Leo for two minutes.”
All of us, as well.
He missed almost a month with a hamstring injury. Since then, his teammates remain in awe. “Honestly, it’s extraordinary. Leo is very humble and simple,’’ defender Chelo Weigandt said. “He's a great person and compliments the team well. He talks to us to inspire us. It's something so nice, that someone so important notices every detail of the group and the club, he makes us more professional. He's taught me to have my feet on the ground. He's a person you can talk to, get advice from. He helps. One is intimidated at first, has shame, but in the day-to-day, it's incredible.”
Soon enough, he’ll be done, off to play with Argentina at the Copa America from June 20 to July 14. And if he chooses to become one of three senior players allowed on his country’s Under-23 team, he’ll be off to the Paris Olympics. Messi Mania may vanish for almost two months here. Will America survive? “We have made an invitation to Leo to join us and we have agreed to talk to him again,” Argentina coach Javier Mascherano said. "We know it's not an easy situation for him. ... We will give him the time he needs.”
There always is the hope he’ll play in the U.S. in 2026, for his grand World Cup finale. If he’s akin to Tom Brady and LeBron James, he won’t say no. “I am not thinking about the World Cup and I am not saying 100 percent that I will not be there because anything can happen,” Messi said. “Given my age, the most normal thing is that I will not be there. Then we will see to what extent. Maybe we do well in Copa America and we continue. Maybe not. Being realistic is difficult.”
For now, he continues to wear No. 10 in pink. It’s impossible to find tickets for home and away games. He does TV commercials at a beach bar, staring at a fresh Michelob Ultra. He shares revenues with the MLS in a $2.5 billion contract with Apple, which will stream matches the next 10 years. “We’re making a long-term commitment to this idea that we are a domestic league playing in the global sandbox,” commissioner Don Garber said, “and how do we capture and capitalize on this growing market opportunity?”
The master brings us together as a planet when little else is commonplace. Taylor Swift, you can say, and Lionel Messi. Find a jersey and enjoy this slice of Earth.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.