Two things can be true at the same time.
1. The Major League Soccer All-Star Game is a bad event that needs to be drastically reimagined or eliminated.
2. How MLS Commissioner Don Garber handles Lionel Messi’s All-Star snub will be a legacy-defining moment.
After questions over Messi’s potential participation in the event simmered through the first two days of All-Star festivities, a large segment of the (admittedly niche) MLS fanbase exploded in anger Wednesday when it became clear the 38-year-old Argentine star was going to skip the exhibition in Austin, Texas.
Leaguewide MLS journalist Favian Renkel declared on X, formerly Twitter, that it was officially time to ask whether former LA Galaxy striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic had been a better ambassador for the league than Messi. In The Austin Chronicle, columnist Eric Goodman called it “a huge middle finger to MLS and its fans.”
And Garber even admitted the whole thing had been handled poorly.
“Yeah, we should have known earlier. We should have addressed it earlier. No doubt about that,” he said at a wide-ranging press conference in Austin earlier Wednesday.
Now, Garber faces the unenviable decision of whether to suspend Messi and teammate Jordi Alba, who also skipped the event, for Saturday’s high-profile clash against FC Cincinnati — a decision the league had not reached as of Thursday afternoon.
“Miami has had a schedule that is unlike any other team,” Garber said, referencing the team’s participation in the FIFA Club World Cup and the Concacaf Champions Cup. “Most of our teams had a 10-day break. Miami hasn’t. We had Leo playing 90 minutes in almost all the games that he’s played. We have to manage through that as a league. At the same time, we do have rules, and we have to manage through that as well.”
The reason this is such a volatile issue has very little to do with the All-Star Game itself and everything to do with the shape of the league’s relationship with Messi, which is fraught with potential conflicts of interest everywhere.
If reporting from 2023 was accurate — and the league has never suggested it isn’t — Messi is not merely an employee of MLS, but rather a business partner.
His initial 2.5-year agreement to play for Inter Miami likely included an agreement to receive a cut of the subscription fees to Apple TV’s MLS Season Pass. More recently, his “Mas+ by Messi” sports drink is now the league’s official hydration partner.
Every league decision that goes Messi’s way, or even the appearance of such a decision, will always invoke claims that Miami and Messi play by different rules than everyone else.
But even two sets of rules would be tolerable for most MLS fans if it weren’t for one thing: Messi quite clearly does not give a f— about being an ambassador for MLS. The All-Star Game just made it crystal clear.
You won’t find any smart MLS fans from the bad old days who think it was a mistake to quite literally change the rules on the fly so the LA Galaxy could sign David Beckham in 2007.
But Beckham very clearly wanted to be in the United States and Hollywood. He also committed to MLS’ long-term future by negotiating future ownership of an MLS team into his contract, which turned into Inter Miami.
Messi appears barely to want to be a part of MLS even while still playing. He never gives group interviews to the press corps covering the team, and rarely in one-on-one situations to journalists he trusts. Meanwhile, every Inter Miami transaction since last year’s embarrassing playoff loss seems to involve either bringing in South American influences or sending established MLS influences somewhere else.
Now he doesn’t just skip the All-Star Game. He does so with no notice or explanation, amid the longest run of good health in his career, in which he’s played every minute of 16 consecutive Miami games.
To be fair, it’s completely unsurprising from Messi, who has always been naturally introverted and, so far as we know, has never tried to hide his aspirations to play as much soccer, earn as much money, and otherwise remain as far out of the public eye as possible.
The expectation that he would be MLS’ next Beckham, or even the equivalent of Pelé in the old NASL, was perhaps unavoidable because of American soccer history. It is also something MLS clearly leaned into in its early efforts to publicize his arrival.
Garber can’t change Messi’s behavior or make up for his league’s errors in marketing their enigmatic star.
But he can stop making exceptions until Messi gives fans and the media some real inclination he’s bought into MLS’ longer-term future. If he doesn’t do at least that, he may be commissioner in name only — with the real man in charge wearing that best-selling pink No. 10 jersey.
