WE’LL PAY FOR LIONEL MESSI, BUT WE’D RATHER HAVE OUR OWN SOCCER ICON

It’s a joy watching the greatest player of all time, in the world’s sports romance, but as he takes over towns across America, wouldn’t we rather have a homespun superstar taking over the global game?

     A time will come when Leo DiCaprio, Magic Johnson and Prince Harry — with no Meghan Markle, aw shucks — don’t have to be mentioned. Soccer will continue to grow in America without the trappings of celebrity and glitter. Parents will know, like birth pain, that chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a brain disorder caused by constant head shots. Somehow, football won’t matter more than motorsports.

     But I won’t be alive. Nor will you. It will require many decades of players who are created in academies, part of our landscape, and give us a legitimate opportunity to win every World Cup. Regardless of who speaks about the high-level of money in this country, the United States must take shape in the world’s sporting romance without treating it the way Europe and South America treat our own football.

     When I write about Lionel Messi playing in Los Angeles, it’s like a British chap asking how Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen will sell that silly oval in front of folks who think it’s Taylor Swift or Beyonce in flight. They pay big sums over there for our stuff, and we pay big sums here for their stuff. That includes a get-in price of $895 and three seats beside the pitch at $2,400 each for the continuing movement of Messi’s MLS Tour. On Apple TV+, which drove a $2.5 billion deal with the league, his arrival is driving a sudden rush in streaming subscriptions. It’s not thanks to his pink outfit and sweetheart deal with Inter Miami.

     It’s him.

     Messi, probably the greatest of all time, which you can argue about and beats the shallow (and long over) Jordan vs. James debate.

     But this is their stuff, not ours. And as long as he’s 36 and on his nine-month World Cup championship cruise, he knows he’s still playing in the minor leagues. He is here for the wealth and worship, for the $150 million over three seasons, to make striking hotel workers feel spectacular when he turned team buses around from Santa Monica, to make celebrities gasp when everyone else gasps. Through it all, soccer continues to inch forward as a secondary sport. Here is your texture in regard to the MLS: The NFL’s regular-season games — not even talking playoffs, where ratings emerge to 60 million and 110 million — averaged 17 million viewers last season. MLS averaged 343,000 on ABC and ESPN for 34 games. Our matches do draw local zealots who roar and wave flags in end zones for 29 clubs. They also go nuts when Messi is here. Recalling childhood, I remember Pele doing the same. Recalling 15 years ago, I remember David Beckham doing the same. This is hardly a new game.

     These are out-of-the-country imperialists. Normally, America only enjoys great ones when they’re among our own, unless you mean the Rolling Stones. Soccer is a sport where we pay excessively because our version is inferior. We don’t pay anywhere near the absurd amounts for MLS talent, many of whom are from foreign lands themselves. We pay out for Messi because we’ll tell our grandchildren about it before he gets too old, which still could be the case in 2026, when the Cup is in the U.S. and he could be a blowhard. For now, enjoy him at his peak.

     “Lionel Messi coming to MLS is an event that can’t be replicated in any other way,” said Sunil Gulati, ex-U.S. Soccer Federation president. “You’ve got one of the best players of all time, if not the best player of all time, coming on the heels of a World Cup win and worldwide popularity joining an American soccer league. That’s just a fantastic, fantastic opportunity for the sport in the United States.”

     Said Clive Toye, who once had the idea of bringing Pele to New York, in an Associated Press piece: “Messi is coming to a country which has millions of soccer players, where its national team draws packed crowds, its women’s national team draws packed crowds, its professional teams are at all kinds of levels — there are minor league teams tucked into villages and goodness where across the country, and kids playing soccer everywhere every day.”

     True, so true. But we also need our own Messi in America — and our current panorama doesn’t allow it. Our best athletes still play football, basketball and, to some degree, baseball. Who is that athlete in soccer? Christian Pulisic, you might say, but no one has mentioned him remotely seriously in any Messi category. Said Giorgio Chiellini, the Los Angeles Football Club center back: “He’s an extraterrestrial. He was, and he is so really different from other players. It’s like LeBron or Jordan.”

     Of course.

     America doesn’t have soccer roots. We just watch instead of weighing truths with our minds. Last year, I saw Messi play with Kylian Mbappe — how’s that for a pre-World Cup extravaganza? — and Neymar with the Paris Saint-Germain team. Imagine a game where Messi was second-rated as the French fans generously rooted for homespun Mbappe, who soon will become the greatest and just about did at the last Cup. Messi wasn’t treated well, stunningly, and left the team this year to join Miami. “A fracture with a significant group of the PSG fans,” he said. Neymar was louder last weekend in a Globo chat.

     “I was very happy for the year he had, but at the same time very sad, because he lived both sides of the coin. He went to heaven with the Argentina team, won everything in recent years, and with Paris he lived hell, we lived through hell, both he and I,” said Neymar, who recently joined Saudi Pro League team Al Hilal. “We get upset, because we're not there for nothing.”

     Now, while Mbappe returns to PSG before an eventual pairing with Real Madrid, Lionel Messi wears the color of a Florida flamingo. It’s a unique joy at the end of summer, especially in a place like L.A., where Harry came without Meghan. His eyes were gazed on the field, but his orange hair was shining inside a suite. Leo DiCaprio’s hands, last we saw, were around a popcorn box.

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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.