Alexi reacts to Lionel Messi joining Inter Miami, MLS over FC Barcelona and Saudi Arabia | SOTU

We come to find out that this, I guess it's fair to say, long-rumored possibility has come to fruition. Leo Messi has decided to take his talents to South Beach, to Inter-Miami, to Major League Soccer, to the United States, to North America. Anybody out there that can possibly paint this in anything less than a joyous moment of celebration and excitement has no soul. This is wonderful, obviously, for Inter-Miami. This is wonderful for Major League Soccer. I think this is wonderful for American soccer, and it has the potential to be yet another seminal moment in the evolution of the game here in North America. Masi, I'll go to you first. Initial reactions when you first heard that this was actually something that came true and it came through all the Twitter folks and Fabrizio and the like, who we go to for these type of breaking news stories, and eventually it got to the point where there was enough smoke that there was absolute fire that this was going to happen. Yeah, when Guillen Balaga reported it, that's when it felt real to me that Fabrizio gave it the here-we-go treatment, and then Messi confirmed it a couple hours ago to a couple of Barcelona newspapers. Yeah, it's absolutely surreal. It's the second time that someone widely considered the greatest player of all time has chosen to come to the United States. It happened with Pele in the mid-'70s, and then 50 years or so later, Lionel Messi, a guy who many people think has dethroned Pele as the greatest player of all time, is coming. He's certainly the greatest player to play in MLS. One could argue that David Beckham maybe has higher name ID with non-soccer fans, but Messi is pretty freaking famous as well and is the much greater player, so it is absolutely incredible that this is happening. Stu? Yeah, this is watershed moment. This is landmark moment. This is a moment we are going to talk about for years and years to come. We'll be talking to our kids about this 20, 30 years from now, saying, hey, MLS, Lionel Messi chose to come to inter-Miami and play in this league, and it was even reported last minute that he had an offer from Saudi Arabia, three years, $1.6 billion. I can guarantee whatever MLS paid him, it's not even close to $1.6 billion, and the deal allegedly involves things from revenue sharing with MLS and Apple's TV deal, to jersey sales through Adidas and inter-Miami, to the future right to buy a club, which I know something David Beckham had. I don't know how that deal would be structured, percentage of club, because remember, when Beckham had the right to buy a club, what was it, $25 or $50 million or something like that? It was a $25 contractually, and it ended up being closer to $35 ultimately, and at the time, it was the right thing to do, but I do think that owners, especially in this day and age where it's now over $500 million, they probably said, we're not going to do that, and if we do, we're going to protect against that rapid type of valuation that we saw that made it an incredible deal from Beckham and his people. And I think just one thing that Masi said there, and that what makes this deal different is that this is a Lionel Messi that is widely considered, and I believe, the best player to have ever played the game, six months off the back of winning a World Cup for Argentina that cemented that status, he will be playing in Major League Soccer. So you can say, okay, the guy's 35 years old, and he's later in his career, you're still going to get some good years out of Lionel Messi, and what he has already done, even in just the minutes after his deal was announced, and that he announced it, and the rumors were spreading. Ticket sales for the fall in Major League Soccer skyrocketed, gone from $35 a seat to $400 a seat. Charlotte's announcing they've got the top bowl open, Atlanta's opening a full stadium. This is only the beginning from what this is going to be commercially for this league. That shows you the power of Lionel Messi, both who he is as the player, but also his commercial value and what he will bring to this league and taking it to the next level. And for those of you watching us, we're showing highlights from the World Cup, and he's given no indication that he's going to retire from the national team. The 2024 Copa America is in the United States, the 2026 World Cup is in the United States. That's where he's going to be playing at club level. So the U.S. is going to become a very relevant country in this last part of his career. Messi is coming to a landscape and a world that is, and while I think the comps are out there when it comes to Beckham and Pele, for example, in terms of the potential for him to completely change the dynamic, he is coming to a very different MLS in terms of the number of teams. Also in terms of the infrastructure, and I think back in the aughts when I was with the Galaxy and we signed Beckham, we were, I guess, understandably unprepared for the hurricane that is David Beckham. Now Inter Miami is still a relatively new club, but there is some intrinsic, you know, knowledge and history, and there should be a template out there. And I would think that Chris Henderson and company down in Miami have been on the phone and been talking and sharing best practices, but there's already stuff in place. You know, when Beckham came, obviously the designated player was done in order to accommodate Beckham. By all accounts, even though this is a creative deal, it's still going to fall within the rules and the restrictions that MLS has, but he is coming to a very different type of major league soccer. And for the first time in his career, he is coming to a league that is built on manufactured parity, which is something that he has never played in before. He's also coming to a team that is last and one of the weakest teams in the league, which is also something that he has never played in before. And it will be very interesting to see what Inter does and what, I guess, MLS does, because there is a collective understanding that everybody's going to benefit from this, what they do. Because ultimately a whistle is going to blow. And what Messi do we see out there, game in and game out, taking seven hour trips to Vancouver or wherever it ends up being, playing on different types of surface and playing in a league where for the first time he is not playing on the elite super club of that league. And Messi, the first 15 years of his international career, he didn't win a senior trophy. His last 12 seasons in Europe, he won one championship title. So it is possible to have Lionel Messi on your team, but screw up the other positions enough that you don't win. So yeah, it's incumbent on Inter Miami, who have been one of the worst franchises in MLS or one of the worst teams in the league this season, to surround them with the pieces and a functioning team where they can be successful. But I think that's a conversation for another day. Today it's just the excitement of having him. Yeah, it is. And you know, I think sometimes, even in this moment, it's important to take it out a little bit bigger and think about MLS needed Messi more than Messi needed MLS. And this is a league that has seen unparalleled growth off the field in the past decade and what teams have gone from 150 million to 300 to 450 million. That part has been phenomenal, MLS. Where MLS have struggled is capturing a TV audience and growing globally and being relevant in the global transfer market and in the conversation about one of the best leagues in the world. Messi instantly gives you a bump there when it comes to interest, piquing the American sports culture's interest. The people out there are going to tune in because it's Lionel Messi. They don't care about Inter Miami, they care about Lionel Messi. And so that part is going to be fascinating to see now how big of a bump that is. And when you do get that bump, how do MLS capture that momentum and use it in a positive direction? Because I felt this year it's been a little bit stagnant. People can't find it. It's on Apple TV and we have one game a week that's on Fox. Today will have been the first time that a lot of people have even heard about MLS this year. And I mentioned he spoke to a couple of Barcelona papers today. He took them through his thought process. And it's clear that he wanted to go to Barcelona first, but the finances were just too complicated. They were going to have to sell players, they were going to have to ask others to lower their salaries. And then there was no guarantee La Liga was going to sign off on it. You can speak to that, being an owner in that league, how much Teblas has really cracked down on the financial stuff. And then he determined that if it wasn't going to work at Barcelona, he wasn't going to play for any other European club. He was going to leave Europe, which then left Saudi Arabia and MLS. Saudi Arabia offered more money, but he chose MLS, he said, for family reasons. Barcelona shortly thereafter put out a statement on their website, which is getting a lot of attention on Twitter because people thought this was pretty salty. They said, on Monday, June 5th, Jorge Messi, the player's father and representative, informed club president Joan Laporta of the player's decision to join Inter Miami, despite having been presented with a proposal from Barca in consideration of the desire of both Barcelona and Lionel Messi for him to once again wear the Blaugrana. President Laporta understood and respected Messi's decision to want to compete in the league with fewer demands, further away from the spotlight, and the pressure he has been subjected to in recent years. Crammy River. I mean, we won. We won. But I will say, you know, part of the quotes, and there's very few of them that are coming out. There'll be more going forward. He said he wanted to get out of the spotlight a bit. Now, we saw this only last year when he went to dinner in Miami. Surrounded. Yeah. Messi's not going to walk down the street to the 7-Eleven, he'd get a Slurpee, and nobody's going to recognize him. He's one of the most famous people in the world. But back to your point about Messi, keep in mind that David Beckham came to the league when he was 31, Messi is 35, he'll be 36 when this ultimately all plays out. But name me one team in the world that wouldn't sign Messi right now. And by the way, that includes PSG and Real Madrid. Everybody in the world would love to have Messi. And so you can throw out the Retirement League and all that, and I think MLS has moved on from there. But this is going to be really interesting. And also to your point, Stu, maximizing Messi is huge. And whether it's the financial part of it, jerseys, and tickets, but also getting people into the tent. And this gets back to a bigger picture type of thing. Messi is not going to change MLS drastically. And guess what? MLS is ultimately bigger than Messi and will go on beyond Messi. But his lasting legacy is going to be how many people come into that soccer tent that we talk about. Because MLS's problem has been and continues to be not that there aren't soccer fans in the U.S., is that there aren't enough MLS fans. And if this gives them an entree, if this is the hook to bring people in, that's what MLS needs. And not all are going to stay, if and when he leaves, but a portion of them will. And you will have moved that much further because this is a labor of love, yes, but still a labor. And it makes it that much easier to continue to push this up the hill when it comes to Major League Soccer and being relevant and being credible and being appealing. Not just domestically, but around the world. And you know, this is a stunning rebuke for Saudi Arabia because they've come to believe that if you offer enough money, you can buy anything you want. And there were some developments in the golf world this week that reinforced that belief that we're going to talk about later on the podcast. But here they offered him initially $400 million per year. We were all saying, wow, that's incredible. And then they even upped that offer at the end, which is kind of hilarious to me because at a certain point, it's not about the money. If you offer somebody $400 million a year and they turn you down, then they fundamentally don't want to play for you. Offering him $500 million, I don't think it's going to change the equation that much. It reminds me of when the U.S. government was chasing after Bin Laden, they offered a $25 million reward. And when they didn't get any information, they upped it to $50 million because that was the problem. You know, these Afghan goat herders were ready to give him up, but $25 million was frankly insulting. So, yeah. I mean, I wonder. Now, listen, don't cry for Saudi Arabia. They signed Cristiano Ronaldo a few months ago. They just signed Karim Benzema. And I don't know if you saw it today, N'Golo Kante is heading there as well. I'm sure many other players will go there as well. I think what it really does come back to, though, for Major League Soccer in this moment and the growth and heading into 2026, which we're going to continue to talk about and where this league can be in that moment. This is a statement made by MLS and it puts MLS on the map in a different way. Now, it doesn't mean that every big superstar is going to be running here in the prime of their career. But again, it's just another reminder of how this league has grown over the past decade, two decades, going back to the Beckham years, going back even further. I mean, think where this league was 20, 25 years ago, you didn't even have to go back that far. I mean, when Beckham joined MLS, I don't have the exact number because I was playing in the league at that time, but it was 12 to 14 teams, I think, in the league. We just announced 30th team when it comes to San Diego that will be joining. I mean, the league has doubled in the past 10 years. You're about to have the best player in the history of the game will be playing in an 18000 temporary cedar in Fort Lauderdale until their full stadium is done in Miami. He's going to be playing in Yankee Stadium at some point. Hey, listen, Pele played in horrible stadiums, too, what he's just done, right? I can't even picture it, though, right now, like Messi playing in an inter-Miami jersey, right? It's surreal. And Zlatan just retired, and I saw you and John Strong on Twitter reminiscing about that famous call, his debut in El Trofico. Have you thought about that? And now you've called Messi goals covering Copa America, World Cup, et cetera, but you're going to get to cover a Messi goal in MLS and what that call is going to be like. John and I were instantly texting back and forth, looking at our schedule to see when we have an inter-Miami game, and it turns out we have one in late September. I would not be surprised. I don't know how all this works behind the scenes, but if we don't end up with a couple more inter-Miami games before the year is done, and I don't know when he's officially going to debut. I know that's all going to come out in the many days we have in front. But I would just say that, you know, everybody right now, as we are doing, we're rushing in here. This is my wedding anniversary today with my wife, because this is a huge moment for American soccer. And I'm thankfully pumped that we landed the big fish here in Lionel Messi. I'm sure you won't hear it from your wife that you said, hey, honey, I just got to go out for a little bit and record a podcast. Lexi's calling. I got to go hang with Lexi and Masi. What bothers her more, you blowing off the anniversary or Michigan beating Ohio State in the last two games? Probably the latter. So when we think about the changes, and you know, I was a little smart-ass this morning on Twitter when I said if Messi really wanted to leverage the value that he had, that he should have said, well, I demand pro-rel and I demand the salary cap to be abolished going forward. But to your point, you mentioned it, so let's kind of play this forward here. What MLS and indirectly American soccer ultimately looks like going forward into 2026, and how much can the attention that Messi brings kind of fuel the pump, if you will, to possibly some changes going forward? Because I don't think that we have seen what MLS can be yet, because I don't think it's unleashed all of the power and fuel by design, because it is a league that is built, as we know, on manufactured parity and the single entity and all that. But if you took off some of the shackles and you said to these owners, whether they are whether they are old-school types of owners, and said, have at it, what would this league look like, and do you think that this can help propel it forward to a little bit more of that? Yeah, so I think that for this league to be in the conversation anywhere close to the European leagues, you need a good Mexican league, you need North America to be strong. I don't think that MLS can do it alone in terms of just being a destination and being far away from what is still considered the better leagues and the top five leagues in Europe, but then also the Champions League, right? Like that's that's the competition that the top players want to play in. But what we have seen, though, is that players can be bought money. Money is there. Look at Saudi Arabia. They're the perfect example of what's going on right now, where Kareem Benzema is going, Conte is going, all the names that you've mentioned. What does that ultimately come down to? It comes down to money. And I think that if you're paying even remotely close, let's say you're 10 percent, 20 percent less than Europe, but you're in the United States and you're in Miami, you're in New York, you're in L.A. Players would rather live here than Saudi Arabia. Come on. I mean, even even Messi said that he said some of the quotes that came out. My family. I don't know. I could see my kids living there. The money is one thing. We've already heard about Ronaldo. His experience is there. The infrastructure we have here, the quality of life, the beaches. Miami is a phenomenal city. So like all of that, the U.S. has going for itself, I would say even beyond what Europe has in many places. But it comes down to money. It comes down to just taking the shackles off a little bit. Increasing spending. Messi, you're going to see a big bump in now commercial interest, I think, in the United States. Now, whether that's short term or that's long term. But you know, what's going to be fascinating, guys, is let's say Messi's three, four or five games into his MLS career. He's traveled across the country, played in Vancouver. They played in Chicago two days later. They played in his team's not doing well. They're not a good team. What are his comments going to be about the league? Right. Everybody's going to be interested to see what he has to say in terms of comparison of our standard. We do it every single time. How does MLS compare to the Premier League or the Championship or La Liga? All of these things are going to be interesting to see how he kind of measures up with that. But then it's also on Miami to build a good team around him. Tata Martino's been linked. Di Maria's been linked. Busquets. Except, Miami had a problem that they cheated a couple of years ago and they don't really have much salary cap room. So then do even the ownership group go, hey guys, let's give Miami a pass for a couple of years because you know what? We need a good Miami for this league to be good. And they do. You like that clip? Well, my State of the Union podcast drops every week. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You like that clip? Well, my State of the Union podcast drops twice a week right here on my very own YouTube page. The only way to stay up to date is to hit that subscribe button down below. Size the day! And see you soon.