The bombshell exploded: “I decided to go to Miami. I haven’t closed it one hundred percent yet. I miss some things, but we decided to continue our journey there.”

Well, that’s it, he said it himself: Messi will play for Inter Miami in the United States. Incredibly…? Unusual…? Disappointing…? Revolutionary…? Lionel Messi will end his career in the United States. He said this personally, in a joint interview with Alberto Masnou, from Sport, and Fernando Polo, from Mundo Deportivo, two sports newspapers in Barcelona. Means of “own” media. Albert and Fernando were with him during the entire race, he called them to Paris and wanted them to have an exclusive. Just Messi. He is from Rosario to the core, but from Barcelona in every act of his life. And a friend of his friends.

You could see that he was happy, relaxed, he finally decided to settle down in a country that never took soccer too seriously, so little seriously that he didn’t even call it soccer: “soccer” was his title. Where number five is the fifth most popular sport after American football, basketball, baseball and ice hockey. And the fifth is for the 64 million Latin Americans who live in the “land of freedom”, otherwise football would be behind tennis, swimming, motorcycle racing and several others. The most loved athlete in the world will play there, phew…!

Even Arabia seemed a more attractive destination because Cristiano Ronaldo, Benzema, Kanté and soon a dozen more famous people are already there. Entering that group at least covered the number one’s decision to leave Europe. But he goes to the United States alone. There will be Messi and NNs. And Messi is too old to see him as a shepherd in the MLS… Dozens of friends shared their disappointment: “I’m devastated, why there…?”, “Messi to American football…? Nooooo…” “He killed me…” “No, for God’s sake, don’t let him go…” Even Johani Ponce, a Venezuelan journalist who has lived in Miami for years, was against it: “I hope and aspire that he will not come to this league. This league is for retired players, traveling is exhausting because the country is too big, people would go to the stadium just to see him because the stadium is more than one car away from the center. He should have retired at the end of the World Cup with all his glory. Because he didn’t go to pension, it’s a shame that he won’t return to Europe, we’ll still be happy to welcome him in Miami”.

David Amador Morales, the great Catalan journalist of Radio La Xarxa and a partner of Barcelona for 50 years, does not think so: “Even though he was excited about the return, he made the right decision. Barça is a totally unstable club and is threatened with destruction. It wouldn’t help Leo, and what’s more, they’d blame him for something that wasn’t his.”

On the other hand, euphoria overwhelms Luis Sánchez, a distinguished Peruvian journalist, columnist for the Miami Herald and Diario de las Américas, from the pearl of Florida: “Here is an earthquake, I tell you. The media is crazy. It will be the biggest event in the history of soccer in the United States, along with the one that the then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger articulated in the 1970s with Pelé’s transfer to the New York Cosmos… In Miami, the possibility of having Messi, but the confirmation caused an outpouring of joy. Tickets for his potential debut game jumped from $80 without him to $400 with him. Messi, however, will be much more than his monumental economic influence. His image, his behavior, his professionalism, his sense of family and his simplicity will contribute not only to the expansion of football in this country but also to the improvement of society. It can even be said without blushing that there will be a Before Messiah and an After Messiah in the United States”.

The Inter Miami jersey will surely be the best-selling jersey in the world in the coming months. And we will hear about many business phenomena that will skyrocket in the coming days. Yesterday at 15:48 Buenos Aires time, Messi had 468,963,721 followers on his Instagram account. When it became known about the novelty, 50,000 followers grew in ten minutes. MLS has just made a leap in global visibility that the Saudi Arabian league will not be able to match even with twenty new stars.

In 1975, with the encouragement of then stadium secretary Henry Kissinger, actually Heinz Alfred Kissinger, a German from Bavaria and a football fan, the American Football League attracted big business corporations and hired dozens of famous names such as Pelé, Beckenbauer, Gerd Müller, Johan Cruyff, Teófilo Cubillas, Giorgio Chinaglia, George Best, Bobby Moore… Kissinger wanted to impose football there, but it was carbonated, it was a boom that lost all its foam at the age of four or five. And he returned to his previous ostracism. Later came David Beckham, Zlatan Ibrahimovich and others. But the name Leo is a thousand times more difficult than all of them and has an advantage over them: it is adored by children and women, so its universe of attraction multiplies.

As expected, 10 did not choose his destiny for money but for the well-being of his family. Messi is that: FAMILY, being divided into four other bodies, Antonela, Thiago, Mateo and Ciro. He is dying to return to Barcelona despite the accident of two years ago, when the door was slammed in his face. And that was brought down to less than 10% of what he was being offered in Arabia. But Barcelona today is an aristocrat in a worn suit that no serious promise could deliver. Not only because of the contract, but also because of the possibility of registration. As the already mentioned Masnou said in the column, “Messi collided with the club of the week”. Everything is left for next week. And incoming, for the next one. If you get a loan, if they give you a guarantee, if you get a little more time. Joan Laporta did not want the world to be like “the president who expelled Messi”. And he asked to return him to his homeland, but his pockets are empty and his hands are tied. He was overjoyed in front of his partners and fans to say goodbye to Messi “for economic prudence” and then hired Ferrán Torres for 55 million euros, Lewandowski for 50 million, Raphinh for 68 million, Koundé for 25 million and several others further on. It does not close the speech.

Leo said: “Economy has never been a problem or an obstacle for me. We never even talked about a contract, but never a formal, written, signed proposal, because there was nothing yet and we didn’t know if it would be possible or not. There was an intention, but we could not predict anything. If it was money, I would go to Arabia or somewhere else. It seemed like a lot of money to me, and the truth is that my decision was for the other side, not for money”.

Saudi Arabia was never in his periscope. Messi had only two possible destinations: Barça or Inter Miami. The Messi project goes far beyond the Florida franchise. Leo would take a percentage of MLS Pass subscribers and another of the profits his arrival in MLS would bring to Adidas. MLS television rights are in the hands of Apple, which paid the US league $2.5 billion for a ten-year contract. Apple TV + announced in the past few days that it will broadcast a series about Messi’s victory at the World Cup in Qatar with Argentina. Messi’s deal with Adidas is also a big one, as his relationship with the three stripes began almost simultaneously with his career. Adidas serves all MLS teams (29) through a sponsorship contract signed until 2030 worth 830 million. (D)