Two issues may be true on the identical time.
1. The Main League Soccer All-Star Sport is a foul occasion that must be drastically reimagined or eradicated.
2. How MLS Commissioner Don Garber handles Lionel Messi’s All-Star snub will probably be a legacy-defining second.
After questions over Messi’s potential participation within the occasion simmered by way of the primary two days of All-Star festivities, a big section of the (admittedly area of interest) MLS fanbase exploded in anger Wednesday when it turned clear the 38-year-old Argentine star was going to skip the exhibition in Austin, Texas.
Leaguewide MLS journalist Favian Renkel declared on X, previously Twitter, that it was formally time to ask whether or not former LA Galaxy striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic had been a greater ambassador for the league than Messi. In The Austin Chronicle, columnist Eric Goodman known as it “an enormous center finger to MLS and its followers.”
And Garber even admitted the entire thing had been dealt with poorly.
“Yeah, we must always have identified earlier. We must always have addressed it earlier. Little question about that,” he mentioned at a wide-ranging press convention in Austin earlier Wednesday.
Now, Garber faces the unenviable choice of whether or not to droop Messi and teammate Jordi Alba, who additionally skipped the occasion, for Saturday’s high-profile conflict towards FC Cincinnati — a call the league had not reached as of Thursday afternoon.
“Miami has had a schedule that’s in contrast to another staff,” Garber mentioned, referencing the staff’s participation within the FIFA Membership World Cup and the Concacaf Champions Cup. “Most of our groups had a 10-day break. Miami hasn’t. We had Leo taking part in 90 minutes in nearly all of the video games that he’s performed. Now we have to handle by way of that as a league. On the identical time, we do have guidelines, and we have now to handle by way of that as properly.”
The rationale that is such a risky problem has little or no to do with the All-Star Sport itself and every little thing to do with the form of the league’s relationship with Messi, which is fraught with potential conflicts of curiosity in every single place.
If reporting from 2023 was correct — and the league has by no means advised it isn’t — Messi shouldn’t be merely an worker of MLS, however reasonably a enterprise associate.
His preliminary 2.5-year settlement to play for Inter Miami possible included an settlement to obtain a minimize of the subscription charges to Apple TV’s MLS Season Move. Extra just lately, his “Mas+ by Messi” sports activities drink is now the league’s official hydration associate.
Each league choice that goes Messi’s manner, and even the looks of such a call, will at all times invoke claims that Miami and Messi play by totally different guidelines than everybody else.
However even two units of guidelines could be tolerable for many MLS followers if it weren’t for one factor: Messi fairly clearly doesn’t give a f— about being an envoy for MLS. The All-Star Sport simply made it crystal clear.
You received’t discover any sensible MLS followers from the dangerous outdated days who suppose it was a mistake to fairly actually change the principles on the fly so the LA Galaxy might signal David Beckham in 2007.
However Beckham very clearly wished to be in the US and Hollywood. He additionally dedicated to MLS’ long-term future by negotiating future possession of an MLS staff into his contract, which changed into Inter Miami.
Messi seems barely to need to be part of MLS even whereas nonetheless taking part in. He by no means offers group interviews to the press corps masking the staff, and barely in one-on-one conditions to journalists he trusts. In the meantime, each Inter Miami transaction since final 12 months’s embarrassing playoff loss appears to contain both bringing in South American influences or sending established MLS influences some place else.
Now he doesn’t simply skip the All-Star Sport. He does so with no discover or rationalization, amid the longest run of excellent well being in his profession, wherein he’s performed each minute of 16 consecutive Miami video games.
To be honest, it’s utterly unsurprising from Messi, who has at all times been naturally introverted and, as far as we all know, has by no means tried to cover his aspirations to play as a lot soccer, earn as a lot cash, and in any other case stay as far out of the general public eye as potential.
The expectation that he could be MLS’ subsequent Beckham, and even the equal of Pelé within the outdated NASL, was maybe unavoidable due to American soccer historical past. Additionally it is one thing MLS clearly leaned into in its early efforts to publicize his arrival.
Garber can’t change Messi’s habits or make up for his league’s errors in advertising and marketing their enigmatic star.
However he can cease making exceptions till Messi offers followers and the media some actual inclination he’s purchased into MLS’ longer-term future. If he doesn’t do no less than that, he could also be commissioner in title solely — with the actual man in cost sporting that best-selling pink No. 10 jersey.
