When acclaimed soccer writer Paul Tenorio followed Lionel Messi and his Inter Miami team to Dallas for one of the superstar’s first road games in America in 2023, the scene outside the team’s Renaissance Plano hotel was strangely calm. A few fans lingered behind barriers. Nothing unusual. Nothing chaotic. Not yet.
Then word spread: Messi was inside.
Within hours, the hotel became a frenzy. Crowds swarmed the lobby, packed the entrances and jammed every floor. As Tenorio rode the elevator to his room, it stopped on each and every floor, fans piling in each time — smashing every button in sight in the hope that, when the doors slid open, Lionel Messi would be standing there waiting for them.
That, says Tenorio in “The Messi Effect: How the Global Legend Changed the Future of American Soccer” (St. Martin’s Press), is the Messi effect: part athlete, part rock star, part religious experience. “By most any measure, Messi in Major League Soccer (MLS) has been an overwhelming success,” he writes.
Born in June 1987, Lionel Messi grew up in Rosario, Argentina, a small kid with a massive talent — and a serious growth hormone deficiency that threatened his future in soccer.
At 13, his family made a life-changing move to Spain after FC Barcelona agreed to cover his medical treatment and development. From those humble, uncertain beginnings, Messi rose to global superstardom, winning everything in the game and cementing a legacy that many consider the greatest in the history of the sport.
After 18 years at Barcelona, Messi joined Paris Saint-Germain in France but left within two years to join Inter Miami, one of the newest franchises in MLS and partly-owned by Brit superstar David Beckham.
For a league desperate for a boost, both in terms of quality and publicity, Messi was the dream recruit.
“He is so enormously popular globally and I also think he is the greatest of all time, right?” Tenorio tells The Post. “And Americans want to be close to athletes like that. They want the very best and they want that authenticity. And I think that speaks to the growing football culture in this country.”
What made Messi’s impact all the more impressive was that his was a personality seemingly at odds with that needed to carry a league or even a sport. Introverted and very private, he rarely gives interviews and you almost never hear him speak, let alone in English. “His aversion to media obligations would eventually become one of the defining features of his time in MLS,” writes Tenorio.
Contrast that with Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portuguese superstar and Messi’s lifelong rival for the title of the world’s greatest player.
The two men couldn’t be more different.
Ronaldo, now 41, is the preening superstar with an ego to match while Messi prefers the quiet life when he’s not playing.
Instead, Messi does all his talking on the pitch, where he has won everything there is to win in the professional game, from league titles, cups and Champions Leagues galore with Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain to Copa Americas and, of course, the World Cup with Argentina in 2022.
There’s also the small matter of eight Ballon d’Ors, awarded each year to the world’s greatest player— three more than Cristiano Ronaldo.
But while Ronaldo fled to Saudi Arabia in 2022, earning a reported $230 million a year with Al-Nassr, Messi chose to take his many talents to the United States and MLS.
He may have been what Tenorio calls an “odd hero” for MLS, but his presence in the league has given it a boost at a critical juncture. “It’s a weird dynamic between the League and Messi because they really needed a spokesman, like David Beckham was, but he’s just not that person,” says Tenorio.
“And yet his popularity is still so overwhelming that he’s been able to pull them into conversations that they otherwise wouldn’t be in — and that’s all down to his unique ability on the field.”
In October 2025, meanwhile, Messi signed an extension to his deal and this time it guaranteed him equity in the club too, much like Beckham received when he retired from playing. “I think it’s an acknowledgement that Messi is a once-in-a-generation opportunity in the way Beckham was too,” says Tenorio.
“When we think about the impact David Beckham had on American soccer, it’s not the two MLS Cups he won with the LA Galaxy, it’s Inter Miami, and Messi going there.
“That has changed the face of the league.”
Beckham, alongside Inter Miami owner Jorge Mas, was instrumental in persuading Messi to move to Florida, not least as he had been through the same experience when he left Spanish giants Real Madrid to join Los Angeles Galaxy in 2007.
The pair spent three years courting the player, finally convincing him to join in the summer of 2023. As MLS commissioner Don Garber said in 2007: “There’s no Messi in MLS if David didn’t come into our league in 2007.”
Since he made the move, Inter Miami have done all they can to make Messi’s life in the US as relaxed as possible; they even stage Messi’s son’s games at one of their facilities so he can attend in peace, safe in the knowledge that he won’t be mobbed.
But they’ve also made it worth his while.
When Cristiano Ronaldo, now 40, joined Al-Nassr in the Saudi Pro League, he did so with a $230 million-a-year carrot dangling under his nose.
Messi could have followed him to the Middle East and earned just as much, if not more, but instead chose to move to the United States, signing a two-and-a-half year deal in July 2023, worth a reported $150 million over the life of the contract, as well as lucrative revenue-sharing deals with Apple TV and Adidas.
For years, MLS has taken on an array of high-profile imports from the global game, like English superstars Wayne Rooney and Steven Gerrard, European players such as Zlatan Ibrahimović and Thierry Henry and South Americans including Kaká and Carlos Valderrama.
They were all players of world renown, but the majority were all some way past their best.
The difference with Lionel Messi, even though he’s now 38, is that he is held to a higher standard than any player who’s gone before him. “No disrespect to those players,” says Tenorio, “but the reality is that when you’re Messi, you’re being measured against Maradona and Pelé, right?
“You don’t have the luxury of having a bad season or not winning a trophy somewhere.”
While Messi is contracted through 2028, he will be 41 when the deal runs out and the question of what he — and MLS — might do next remains the most intriguing of all.
Messi has already confirmed that he is not interested in becoming a coach, nor would he like to go into television commentary or analysis.
MLS, meanwhile, will need to do something radical to replace the man who has sold out stadiums across the country and given the competition a truly global profile. “What’s keeping those fans there once he’s gone?” asks Tenorio.
“I truly feel MLS is at this critical point in its history where it has to make a decision about what it wants to be. If they can put more quality on the field it can become the dominant league in North America.”
“MLS needs to change its roster rules so it can do more than just sign star players like Lionel Messi — it also has to build stronger overall squads around them. By spending more efficiently and improving the quality of play across the league, MLS can create more competitive games, attract bigger audiences and ultimately secure better media deals that reinvest in the product on the field.”
But as transformative as Messi’s American chapter has been, the spotlight is beginning to shift.
With the 2026 World Cup looming and Argentina preparing to defend the crown Messi delivered in Qatar, the final act of his career is no longer centered on building MLS — it’s about cementing an international legacy that may never be matched.
Gavin is an award-winning author and journalist with over 20 years experience. He has written many critically acclaimed books, including a biography of the American golfer John Daly, “Letting The Big Dog Eat,” and “Once In A Lifetime: The Incredible Story of the New York Cosmos.”
