Lionel Messi's electric World Cup performance should lead more American soccer fans to embrace MLS

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NEW YORK – Depending on traffic, the headquarters of Major League Soccer can be anything from a 30-minute to 2-hour drive to the stadium where Sunday’s final of the 2026 FIFA World Cup will be contested. There are those who follow soccer who insisted throughout the past three decades geography might be the only element ever connecting the league to the sport’s grandest stage.

Now, the biggest star in the game is the biggest star in MLS.

Lionel Messi plays here.

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And it hasn’t prevented him from playing there, at New Jersey’s Meadowlands, leading Argentina in pursuit of a fourth World Cup title against a comprehensive Spain squad looking to add a second star above its crest.

Messi joined Inter Miami in the summer of 2023, after he had just turned 36, and those who commonly assail the country’s first division as a “retirement league” had another ingredient for their criticism. He remained active in the Argentina national team, though, and led the squad to a second Copa America title in three years. And then he captained them through World Cup qualifying, in which they won 12 of their 18 games, the only team on the continent to reach double figures in wins.

And now he has scored 8 goals in this World Cup, which has him in the lead for the tournament’s Golden Boot award, which matters a whole lot less than the fact all that scoring has led Argentina to Sunday as the only team that has won each of its seven games.

“I think that it goes beyond words, what Messi means as a player and what he means for Argentina,” Spain captain Rodri told reporters Friday. “Obviously, for me, he is the greatest of all time. He is a player that manages to lead his national team, and carry them in Qatar to win the World Cup and, in this case, to reach the final.”

Spain coach Luis de la Fuente told a story of how he was working for Sevilla in the mid-2000s and their team faced FC Barcelona in Spain’s Copa del Rey competition.

“We had heard about this guy. We said, ‘Let’s go for man-marking this guy,’ and then in the 70th minute, it was 0-0, and the player who was marking him got a yellow card,” de la Fuente said. “We substituted that player, and Leo scored four goals.

“We’re going to pay close attention to him.”

Since his arrival at Inter, FBref.com lists Messi as having earned 31 caps for Argentina, all but six of them in the opening lineup. He has been subbed out of only six of the 25 he started. He has scored 22 goals and assisted on 12 others. So he has produced goals in 71 percent of his appearances as an MLS player, compared to 59 percent while he was competing in elite European leagues.

This is not to say Messi is a better player because he entered MLS, only that continuing his career against Orlando City and the New York Red Bulls and Columbus Crew has not diminished him any more than age has.

In MLS, he’s won three major trophies with Inter Miami: the 2023 Leagues Cup competition against MLS teams and those from Liga MX; the 2024 MLS Supporters’ Shield presented to the team that earns the most regular season points; and the 2025 MLS Cup, the most significant trophy a team in the league can win, which he delivered six of the team’s record 20 playoff goals — and assisted on nine more.

MLS has been around since 1996, formed as part of the agreement with FIFA that granted the U.S. the 1994 World Cup. There were moments in the early 2000s when it appeared the league would collapse, but now it is home to 30 teams, a dozen of which are valued at more than $700 million by Forbes

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One of MLS's most annoying obstacles, though, has been the persistent denigration of many who claim to love the sport but openly reject the top league in a nation that went without one for most of the 20th century and then a dozen years between the collapse of the North American Soccer League and MLS arrival. American soccer will grow even faster when more of those who claim to love the sport pay the country’s top league greater attention.

MLS is opposed by some for two reasons: 1) It does not feature promotion and relegation, which was untenable during that shaky start that saw multiple clubs go out of business and now is unreasonable for those paying franchise fees of a half-billion or more; 2) It is not the world’s best league.

MLS did rank No. 7 at this World Cup in terms of the number of players participating, and along with Messi and such players as Atlanta United’s Matias Galarza of Paraguay and FC Dallas’ Petar Musa, scored goals that were essential to their teams’ advancement from group play.

Just as one can follow both the Ohio State Buckeyes and Pittsburgh Steelers, it is possible to be a fan of both the Premier League and MLS. Even with the U.S. league moving toward a fall-to-spring season in 2027, the two leagues literally never are staging games at the same time.

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Toward the end of the World Cup, MLS began running TV ads during semifinal coverage designed to draw more soccer fans into its universe. Those spots feature Messi most prominently, as they should. The greatest player ever to play the game is wearing a pink Inter Miami uniform and competing in the United States’ (and Canada’s) top league.

Of the 48 trophies he has won as a senior player, the most recent trophy was MLS Cup last December. Who could have imagined an MLS player would be this close to lifting the most coveted and celebrated trophy in all of sports?

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