Dave Hyde: Messi is everything hoped as his play exceeds even the hype
The expectations were high. Lionel Messi has exceeded them.
The hope was he’d change Major League Soccer. He’s everything it hoped.
We’re four games into Messi’s landing in America, and each one has been a Messi biopic. On Sunday night, playing in front of Dallas fans who sold out the game in less than 30 minutes for nearly 10 times the standard price, Messi scored a second goal in the 85th minute to tie the game on a bend-it-like-owner-David-Beckham free kick.
Inter Miami then won on penalty kicks. They hadn’t won in the 11 games before Messi and fellow-Barcelona travelers Sergio Busquets and (for the last two games) Jordi Alba arrived. Now the team hasn’t lost in their four games.
Inter Miami had fewer than a million Instagram followers pre-Messi. The team has more than 13 million now.
Apple TV boasted about having 700,000 Major League Soccer subscriptions before Messi arrived. It reportedly is approaching double that now.
Pink wasn’t on the pro-sports color spectrum before Messi came. Adidas reported “record single-days sales” for T-shirts of his pink Inter Miami jersey. The team sold out of them at one point.
His marquee name made his arrival matter. His play closes all the deals. You don’t have to understand soccer to understand he’s different. He changes play. He dominates games. It took him four games to pull into a tie as Inter Miami’s leading scorer.
Part of that’s because it’s a step-down in competition going from elite leagues in Spain and France to the world’s 16th-ranked league, as MLS is according the site globalfootballrankings.com.
The other part is he’s the greatest player of his generation.
“It’s not explainable, to be honest,’’ Inter Miami defender DeAndre Yedlin told reporters in Dallas after Messi’s two goals. “That’s kind of what we were talking about in the locker room. It’s just not human-like.”
Sports is about the moment, not names or contracts or hype. Messi keeps delivering moments, too. A winning free kick in his opener against Cruz Azul three weeks ago. Two goals and an assist in a win against Atlanta. Two more goals and a yellow card — he got mad, showing this matters to him — against rival Orlando City (who knew they were a rival?).
“A circus,’’ Orlando coach Oscar Parea derisively called the game, officiating and atmosphere after losing.
Has an MLS game been framed so wonderfully? Who even heard of the League Cup tournament between MLS and Mexican leagues before Messi’s opening game in it?
Now the Inter Miami team that couldn’t win before he arrived added another game Friday night in Fort Lauderdale after advancing to the League Cup quarterfinals. And, well, maybe they will sell out for the first time since his opening game. Maybe not.
This isn’t a sales job. The past two home games were near sellouts. You go or you don’t depending on your likes, the prices and the stadium location. But you have to admit it’s an oh-so-South-Florida moment when you look around the country.
Dallas was Inter Miami’s first road game and had its quick sellout. Cincinnati, whose game was announced in July before Messi arrived, sold out tickets against Inter Miami game in a few hours.
Chicago, last in MLS revenue last season, will set a league record for gross revenue for its Oct. 4 game against Inter Miami at the 61,500-seat Soldier Field. Atlanta opened its upper deck for its August game against Inter Messi, despite being warned Messi isn’t expected to play since it doesn’t have a natural-grass field (he’s never played on artificial grass).
“When you actually see it happening, it’s kind of surreal,’’ Inter Miami goalie Drake Callender said after Sunday’s game.
Inter Miami has become a living, breathing franchise after four listless seasons in what amounts to a second chance at a first impression. The league owes a massive thank-you to Beckham and co-owner Jorge Mas for signing Messi to an inventive deal that involves new Apple TV subscriptions, sold Adidas shirts, a part of Inter Miami ownership and is in the reported $50 million-per-year range.
Every rock you look under shows how that signing has impacted a changed world. Inter Miami was adding 222 Twitter followers a week in the couple of months before Messi arrived, according to Socialblade.com. The team added 326,239 followers the week he announced he was coming here in June. It hasn’t let up, either, as 216,103 more followed last week.
The frequent comparison is to Beckham raising the MLS profile when he arrived as a player in 2007. But Beckham suffered an early injury, returned to Europe for a stretch and didn’t win until his fourth season in Los Angeles.
Messi changed the MLS world from his arrival. His name sold tickets and the color pink. But his play these opening first four games gives meaning to the hype. That’s what matters most. He met the sky-high expectations and raised them with his talent.