According to Argentine journalist Esteban Edul, Lionel Messi is considering taking a hiatus from MLS at the end of the season to spend the final months before the 2026 FIFA World Cup preparing at a different club he believes will provide a better level of competition.
Whether or not this materializes, it reveals one truth in the relationship between Major League Soccer and the biggest star in its history: It was always pretty one-sided.
Messi had been MLS Commissioner Don Garber's White Whale long before he finally agreed to join the Herons in the summer of 2023. When he finally did join, there were misguided pronunciations that we had entered an era similar to when Pele came out of retirement to join the NASL's New York Cosmos and serve as an idea ambassador for the game.
It was a flawed assumption to anyone who had ever closely watched the ingenious but introverted Argentine at FC Barcelona, with the Argentine national team, and for a shorter, more checkered stretch with Paris St. Germain.
A man of few words
Predictably, Messi has maintained a relatively low profile off the field, rarely addressing the media before or after games. Even in the controlled environments of commercial endorsements, he rarely speaks, saying short phrases like "No, Michelob Ultra!" or "Bien Asistencia!"
Meanwhile, the Miami roster has increasingly come to resemble a closed-knit family rather than your average diverse MLS roster. According to Transfermarkt, 12 of Miami's players have at least some Argentine connection. Fully 20 have some connection to the world's Spanish-speaking diaspora.
His manager is longtime club and international teammate and friend Javier Mascherano. The club's sporting director was once his youth coach at FC Barcelona.
Messi may be playing in MLS, but it's fair to assert that he's hardly assimilated to the league and in some ways taken steps to actively avoid doing so. This despite negotiating a unique contract that made Messi not only by far the league's highest-paid player in history but also a league partner as someone who shares in its TV revenues.
If Messi is frustrated with his team's capabilities, perhaps he is the architect of his own discontent. Capable supplemental MLS players like Julian Gressel, Robert Taylor, Kamal Miller and DeAndre Yedlinhave all found themselves outside Miami's plans.
There's no obvious evidence their replacements (outside Messi's former FC Barcelona teammates of Luis Suarez, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba) have been improvements.
Meanwhile, the idea that Messi is mostly concerned about the long MLS break negatively contributing to his World Cup preparation doesn't make sense. League play will resume in late February, given Messi more than three full months of competition prior tournament. If anything, given his previous injury issues over the last few seasons, that time off should be a benefit.
A matter of trust
From a distance, the appearance is that while Messi has been happy to accept compensation from MLS, he has never trusted any of its voices. Not longtime league veterans. Not former sporting director Chris Henderson, who found himself at Atlanta United the year after his Miami team won the MLS Supporters' Shield.
Perhaps not even Argentine manager Tata Martino, who previously guided Atlanta United to the 2018 MLS Cup. Officially, Martino resigned from his Miami post after last season due to personal reasons, but there have always been suspicions his departure was at the very least not lamented within the Herons dressing room.
Perhaps this report that Messi wants to leave is just a negotiating tactic. It's easy to see just how much the league has staked its future on the Argentine's reputation, and how little negotiating leverage that would provide in terms of an extension. Perhaps Messi's heart and mind are really calling him elsewhere. He has always appeared to care deeply about maintaining his relationship with Barcelona and the Argentine national team.
Either way, it's tough to ignore that the longer this goes on, the Messi-MLS love affair is deeply one-sided. That doesn't mean the league can't still benefit from continuing their relationship. But it needs to be realstic about what such an agreement will and won't look like.