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    At Inter Miami, Lionel Messi’s Only Complaint Is the Humidity

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    After taking the Leagues Cup tournament by storm, Messi, 36, had his first news conference since joining Inter Miami. It was clear he is now in a more relaxed stage of his career.The version of Lionel Messi who has become South Florida’s reigning sport king is not the playmaker in his prime that he was for Barcelona or the tortured captain-under-pressure that he was for Argentina. The Messi of Miami is, in his own words, happy. Very happy.Happy to have moved his family to a city where they used to vacation. Happy to greet legions of adoring fans. Happy to show his young new team, Inter Miami of M.L.S., how to win. Less happy, perhaps, to deal with South Florida’s crushing summer humidity.Those were Messi’s reflections in the first news conference of his career in the United States, a rite of passage for newly acquired star players that was supposed to take place when he arrived about a month ago. But Messi is not just any player. He is known to rarely speak to reporters. And the circuslike atmosphere that surrounded his first days in town was unlike anything M.L.S. had ever seen, even when David Beckham arrived in 2007.So Messi’s moment to meet the American press was delayed until now, after his team had won six straight games and he had scored nine goals for his new club. Inter Miami, which had the fewest points in M.L.S. regular-season play before it signed Messi, will now play the final of the new Leagues Cup tournament against Nashville S.C. on Saturday.“I think the team experienced a lot of growth,” the soft-spoken Messi said in Spanish, crediting the new coach, Gerardo Martino, the Argentine known as Tata who had coached Messi at Barcelona and on the Argentine national team, with helping the turnaround. (Two of his former Barcelona teammates, midfielder Sergio Busquets and defender Jordi Alba, have also joined him at Inter.)It was one of several understatements Messi delivered during a 20-minute news conference in which he took just 10 questions from a room packed with more than 70 reporters, a dozen television cameras and outlets from Argentina, Brazil and Spain. (“The best player in the history of world soccer just sat here!” one man exclaimed in Spanish to his viewers, pointing to a chair shortly after Messi left.)When a reporter asked about the ease with which Messi and Inter Miami have defeated their M.L.S. and Liga MX opponents in the tournament, hinting at the inferior level of competition he now faces compared with Europe, Messi spoke about “setting difficult goals” for Inter — and praised Liga MX and M.L.S. teams’ ability to compete.“The Mexican league is a very competitive league, where they have great, world-class players,” he said.Messi has scored nine goals in six games in the Leagues Cup tournament, including on Tuesday in a semifinal against the Philadelphia Union, one of the better teams in M.L.S. in recent years.Eric Hartline/Usa Today Sports Via Reuters ConIt was clear that Messi, 36, who led Argentina to its first World Cup championship in more than three decades last year, was in a more relaxed chapter of his career. Asked if he thought he might win the Ballon d’Or, the award given annually to the world’s best soccer player, for an eighth time, he said he was not considering it, especially “after having achieved the World Cup.”Messi did acknowledge that tearfully leaving Barcelona in 2021 for Paris St.-Germain was a rough transition. The move happened “practically overnight,” he said, making it difficult for him to get used to a new club and a city that was not a particularly good fit for his family.In contrast, his wife and three sons blessed coming to Miami, he said, characterizing it as a decision the family made together. Messi chose Miami over a reportedly more lucrative deal in Saudi Arabia, which is pursuing top talent, and over a potential return to Barcelona, which is in financial trouble.“It’s a city of many Latinos, and that makes everything easier,” he said. “All the time, they are showing you affection, closeness. That, already, is the most important thing, the healthiest thing, and the most beautiful thing to adjust and be able to enjoy what you do.”More than a hundred fans clad in Inter and Argentina jerseys waited outside the stadium to catch a glimpse of his departing car after the news conference, despite the rain.“One never completely adapts to this climate,” Messi had said moments earlier.James Wagner More

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      MLS and Liga MX Announce New Leagues Cup Tournament

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      The Leagues Cup, part of an effort to capitalize on global interest in the game, will likely raise new concerns about soccer players’ exhausting schedules.In a major reordering of soccer competition in North America, the top men’s leagues in the United States and Mexico announced Tuesday the creation of an annual World Cup-style tournament in which every team from both leagues will compete. The monthlong tournament will take place in July and August, beginning in 2023, expanding the collaboration between Major League Soccer and Liga MX and adding more matches to an already crowded world soccer calendar.“We need more global interest,” Don Garber, the M.L.S. commissioner, said in an interview. “This is a global sport. We are doing a good job of growing interest in M.L.S. in our league here domestically. The next step is how do we grow interest outside of our region?”A 47-team tournament (it will have 48 whenever M.L.S. expands to 30 teams) with group and knockout stages during the only relatively quiet period of the soccer calendar — between the end of summer international tournaments and the beginning of club play in the fall — is a linchpin of the strategy.The tournament will replace the much smaller Leagues Cup tournament and take its name. In order to grant it legitimacy and ensure teams take it seriously, organizers promised a large prize pool (but didn’t say how large). The top three teams will also earn berths into the CONCACAF Champions League, the region’s top club competition.The new Leagues Cup will require a substantial reorganization of the M.L.S. and Liga MX schedules. Rather than holding the event alongside league competition, both leagues will take a break for the duration of the tournament. For M.L.S., that means a pause of a month in the middle of its season, which typically starts in March, while for Liga MX that likely means a delay to the beginning of its season.The entire soccer world, from clubs to leagues, confederations and FIFA itself, are in a constant pitched battle over the schedule, over new leagues and navigating national coronavirus laws. Promoters seem to often view soccer as a lucrative zero sum game, using increasingly exhausted players to wring as many dollars as possible out of the sport, with little cooperation among organizations.Aware of this tension, M.L.S. and Liga MX say they created the new tournament with the involvement of CONCACAF, which oversees soccer in North America, Central America and the Caribbean. And the Leagues Cup announcement coincided with another on Tuesday, from CONCACAF, which said that starting in 2024 the CONCACAF Champions League would expand to 27 clubs, from 16 in 2021.The expanded Champions League will begin with three regional tournaments, one each for North America, Central America and the Caribbean, before 16 teams qualify for knockout stages.The Leagues Cup will see Mexican players spend even more time in the United States, as the tournament will be held here. In 2023, the best Mexican players will compete for their national team in the Gold Cup, the regional championship for national teams that has always been held primarily in the United States, in June and July. Many will then return to their Mexican clubs, which will already be in the United States preparing for the Leagues Cup.Mikel Arriola, the Liga MX president, is not worried that Mexican soccer fans will dislike seeing their players spend nearly the entire summer playing north of the border, able to watch only on television without significant travel. This tournament is additive, he said, and does not take away from Liga MX.“This will be a mixed model because we will continue with our traditional way in our local league,” Arriola said. “However, we both are innovating in this kind of summer extravaganza.”The organizers hope the tournament, beyond selling millions of tickets, will create a bonanza of television dollars, especially outside of North America. The rights to show M.L.S. and Liga MX games outside of their home countries are currently not particularly valuable. While M.L.S. is shown in, say, England, television and streaming companies there pay far more to show the Premier League or the Champions League than they do for M.L.S. But an easy-to-understand tournament during a lull in the calendar could prove popular.M.L.S. will control television rights to the tournament in the United States and Canada, Liga MX will control the rights for Mexico, and the two will partner to sell them in the rest of the world. M.L.S. is also speaking with media companies about both local and national rights to show its league games, which are currently held by ESPN, Fox and a number of local media companies but expire next year.Media rights to the Leagues Cup could be sold in conjunction with those rights to the same company or companies, or could be sold separately.The success of the tournament will also be judged on whether it improves North American clubs and players. Arriola said the tournament will provide vital competition to teams in the middle and the bottom of Liga MX, who do not qualify for the CONCACAF Champions League.“Sometimes big teams grow alone,” he said. But if the Leagues Cup generates the proper incentives, there will be more of what Arriola called “horizontal growth” across the entire league.Ultimately the Leagues Cup, and everything else between the two leagues, is pointed toward 2026, when the United States will host the World Cup, alongside Mexico and Canada. “Now we have the rocket fuel of the World Cup that could help propel us to a higher level,” said Garber, “and ultimately be viewed as we have aspired to be, one of the top leagues in the world.” More

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      An M.L.S.-Liga MX Alliance: What's the End Game?

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      Wednesday’s M.L.S. All-Star Game was the latest collaboration between the top leagues in the U.S. and Mexico. Owners and executives see profit in their partnership, and say both sides can win.One could forgive the top soccer players in Mexico and the United States if they feel as if they have seen quite a lot of each other recently.When some of the best players from Mexico’s Liga MX lined up against some of the biggest stars from Major League Soccer in the M.L.S. All-Star Game on Wednesday night in Los Angeles, it was not — for a handful of them — the first time they had played an important match north of the border this summer. Whether in a series of new cross-border club competitions or in two important national team tournaments, the Nations League and Gold Cup, U.S.-Mexico matchups — in a variety of jersey colors — are now more frequent than ever.But whatever Wednesday’s exhibition lacked in stakes — the M.L.S. all-stars prevailed in a penalty shootout, 3-2, after the team played a 1-1 tie — that the game happened at all was perhaps the best demonstration yet of where the two leagues, and therefore their two countries, believe their futures lie: together.Alejandro Irarragorri, who controls the Liga MX clubs Santos Laguna and Atlas, this week described the leagues as having arrived at an inflection point at which they could continue to go their separate ways, or choose to work together.“I am sure on a stand-alone basis we will do well if we don’t do a thing together,” Irarragorri said Monday in a Zoom interview from the well-appointed home of the Seattle Sounders owner Adrian Hanauer. “I also understand if we do something together, we will be better.”But can two rivals really win at the same game, and at the same time?M.L.S. Commissioner Don Garber, right, and Liga MX President Mikel Arriola are bullish on their leagues’ collaborations.Kelvin Kuo/USA Today Sports, via ReutersCollaboration between leagues in different countries is rare in world soccer. While teams from different countries often square off in various continental competitions, rarely do the leagues themselves interact unless there is a problem that needs fixing. The collaboration between Liga MX and M.L.S., then, represents how soccer economics are being upended globally, as well as a close relationship between the U.S. and Mexico that extends well beyond soccer.“If you remember what happened in 1994, we had a soccer championship here,” said Mikel Arriola, the new president of Liga MX. “We had the World Cup here in the U.S. And also another thing happened that year, which was the execution of NAFTA,” he said, referring to the free trade agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada.For Arriola, whose career was mostly spent in a series of Mexican government positions, NAFTA best represents what soccer is now trying to replicate: It jump-started economic growth in Mexico, and he contends collaborations with M.L.S. will do the same for his league.Clubs from the United States and Mexico have faced each other for decades, of course, in the CONCACAF Champions League, the region’s top club competition. But in 2019 the two leagues created a new tournament, the Leagues Cup, to be contested by the best teams not to qualify for the Champions League and the Campeones Cup, another new one-off match between the winners of each league. Wednesday’s All-Star showcase in Los Angeles represented yet another increase in the rapid expansion of opportunities for players, and their two leagues, to compete against one another.Kai Wagner, left, of the Philadelphia Union and the M.L.S. all-stars, who beat a Liga MX team in a penalty shootout.Orlando Ramirez/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThat kind of close collaboration will almost inevitably bring the leagues into conflict with the region’s top soccer authorities, mirroring the fights playing out around the world over breakaway ideas like Europe’s short-lived Super League and this week’s potentially explosive club-vs.-country battle over the release of top European pros for World Cup qualifiers.For now, CONCACAF, which governs soccer in North and Central America and the Caribbean, has blessed both the Leagues Cup and the Campeones Cup. But it does not control either event in the same way it does the Champions League, and Arriola and Don Garber, the M.L.S. commissioner, were not shy about declaring how important their leagues are to the region’s soccer credibility.“Mexico, the U.S. and Canada represent 99 percent of the total value of CONCACAF,” Arriola said. But the confederation operates on a one-country, one-vote system, and power in the region has traditionally been held by Caribbean countries, the largest group of members, and one that often votes as a bloc.A Concacaf spokesman did not respond to a request for an interview with Victor Montagliani, the Canadian president of the organization.Asked what he believed Concacaf thought about the increased collaboration, Garber chose his words carefully. “The sport here has these long-established institutions going about governing the game the same way for generations, and I don’t necessarily think that that has to be the way the sport moves forward,” he said.For Liga MX, an increased presence in the United States means spurring revenue growth by tapping into a larger fan base. Mexico’s national team, through its own partnership with the M.L.S.-affiliated Soccer United Marketing, already plays more games in the United States than it does in Mexico, and Liga MX matches regularly draw higher television ratings than M.L.S. games. Arriola acknowledged that, like Mexico’s soccer federation, the Mexican clubs he represents see valuable revenue streams waiting on the northern side of the border.“We are a net exporter of football as a country because we have 60 million consumers in the U.S., and those 60 million people have a G.D.P. per capita 700 percent above ours, and they consume televised games two times compared to the Mexican consumer,” Arriola said.Garber’s bet is that aligning with Liga MX will help M.L.S. make inroads with those fans too, as well as with soccer fans in Mexico. But the most immediate benefit may be a competitive one.In continental competitions, Mexican clubs have traditionally overpowered teams from the U.S., and while that disparity has narrowed in recent years, an M.L.S. team has not lifted the Champions League trophy since 2000. Playing more games, and more consistently, against Mexican opposition may further close the gap between the leagues. And if and when M.L.S. clubs can consistently win those matchups, its credibility and global profile can only grow.Raúl Ruidiaz, a Peruvian striker signed from a Mexican club, helped Seattle become the only M.L.S. team to advance to the Leagues Cup semifinals.Stephen Brashear/Getty ImagesReorienting how the world looks at M.L.S. is Garber’s ultimate goal. The league’s last 15 all-star games have seen a team of M.L.S. stars take on top club teams from Europe, generally squads in the middle of preseason tours. But that format no longer suits the league’s purposes, or its focus, which years ago shifted to the acquisition of rising talents from Central and South America instead of aging players from Europe.In its current iteration, M.L.S. would like to be seen as the leader of a region that is quickly catching up to South America and Europe. But to do that, it first must prove it is a worthy rival to Mexican soccer. Garber said this week that he was willing to try any innovation that might make that happen.“I have always been tasked with having to answer questions about why do the Americans want to do things differently in the sport of soccer,” Garber said. But that might also mean he can get a look at where the sport should be — or is — going faster than his tradition-bound peers in South America and Europe.The obvious question is if M.L.S. and Liga MX will eventually merge. After all, they are hosting the World Cup together with Canada — which already has teams in M.L.S. — in 2026.Wouldn’t a single league made up of the best clubs across North America improve the level of play? Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, stoked such speculation earlier this year when he said such a league could be “the best league in the world.”Hanauer, the Sounders owner, was happy to entertain the question, but he also urged caution. The first time anybody can remember multiple owners from M.L.S. and Liga MX convening together, he said, was in February 2020. That meeting took place at Hanauer’s house in Cabo San Lucas, just before the pandemic shut things down.“It is a ‘walk before we run’ answer,” he said, adding, “We are at the very early stages of beginning to understand each other and get to know each other.” More