Is Messi Enough for Football in the United States?
Lausanne, Switzerland — A deal with unquantifiable proportions was the deal for Messi and his family to move to Miami and play in MLS for the next two years. The move was felt around the world with Messi-Inter Miami jerseys being sold beyond record levels by distributors and being worn by young fans in Barcelona and North America. Despite this being the reality, I will introduce my argument that football player Lionel Messi’s arrival to Major League Soccer was not enough for football to be established as a dominant sport in the United States.
(Media is the key factor in promoting football to the North American masses. I will also use media trends as one measurement for the sport’s dominance in the United States.)
I consider this to be true with respect to the fact that this one player brings sold-out stadiums across all 29 franchises and the self-revealing fact that the player is attracting eyes to the field during football games.
Concerning media coverage in the United States, though more attention has been introduced to the sport, it is natural for the attention to be less critical of the nature of the game and more subjective as a result of the name Lionel Messi.
While Messi is one of the sport’s historical greats, he is revered with the same objective weight as other North American athletes: Kobe Bryant, Serena Williams, Tom Brady, and Tiger Woods. While grand, this weight overlooks the game of football and its rules and developments concerning individual players, the global player market, and renowned coaches and thinkers in world football.
Football in the United States cannot be developed at the highest professional level with just one name. It takes more from a media standpoint.
The culture of the U.S. relies on competition, it should warrant that MLS bring in players with calibers of similarity with respect to the history of the sport. Players with a David Beckham-esque appeal in relation to name popularity and international success should be considered league targets as a means to further cement media interest in the sport.
The smoking gun to my point is that Major League Soccer should have worked high and low to sign Kylian Mbappe and Neymar Jr., former teammates of Lionel Messi at Paris Saint Germain, while both players were contemplating their futures in the summer of 2023. The only other player that would fit this mold would be Cristiano Ronaldo.
Bringing players of similar profiles to Lionel Messi would have been the trademark of change for the sport within North America. It is not too late, but a great window for exponential growth of the sport and continuous media interest has just passed.
2023 is not the first time the greatest name in the sport has played football in the United States. There was also Pele, Johan Cruyff, and Franz Beckenbaur of the 1970s. While such talents were well received in the United States, I contest that this arc of history book players in the North American Soccer League only benefited the league and its observers in the short term with hyper-inflated league growth while the sport was severely underdeveloped.
Today, the sport is much more advanced outside the context of media and Major League Soccer can be seen as the de facto leader in CONCACAF football and an exciting competitor in the world market. With this being the case, adding another one-of-a-kind talent would shift national media attention to football almost indefinitely.
This is true because Messi’s story is told once. Neymar Jr. and Kylian Mbappe perhaps might warrant more story repetition because their successes and their stories are largely lesser known compared to the Barcelona and Argentina world-beater.
I speculate that this media attention would bring more critical awareness to different player profiles within Major League Soccer and North America and therefore awareness to the players who play alongside these leaders.
From a theoretical standpoint, top performers in sports are given the token of top athletes. In football, however, athleticism is not always of the highest order, it is how the player controls the ball, how they pass, or how they shoot.
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What is growth in relation to football in the United States?
It is the dominance of football as the sport of choice in the youth sports industry for boys and girls. It is in the education and qualities of the coaches who teach youth footballers. It is the expectation that after years of development in a proper youth club, the individual could opt to work professionally for a playing contract in the United States or abroad. It could also be the choice to continue playing at a high level and attain an education, to then go professionally afterwards. It is a media that tracks the successes of American players, coaches, and strategists with hopes of covering them as they aim to become international leaders in world football who happen to be American. It is the public that applauds, cares, and wants more and more of that visible success and information of both the men and women’s game. It would eventually be to have youth national players win tournaments at different age groups and then for the men to winthe World Cup.
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Who am I? A football scout with a degree in political science who dedicates time to researching player performances to identify transfer successes in professional football in the United States and Europe. I am currently basing in Europe to prepare for a master’s program and work opportunities.
