MIAMI — Soccer superstar Lionel Messi began training with Inter Miami CF on Tuesday — and he managed to fill the team’s DRV PNK Stadium before even touching the ball.
Two days earlier, thousands of fans welcomed him to Miami and Major League Soccer in a ceremony complete with fireworks and musical performances.
“Just to be near him, you know, it’s like to be near God,” said Alfonso Sundblad, who flew from Buenos Aires to Miami, where his brother and family live, to watch the ceremony Sunday night.
Messi’s official debut with Inter Miami will be Friday, against Mexican Liga MX team Cruz Azul.
Messi’s move to Miami less than a year after a historic and unforgettable victory for Argentina at the 2022 FIFA World Cup has inspired an outpouring of enthusiasm and pride in South Florida, particularly among its Argentinian and broader Latino communities. But it’s also a turning point for MLS, thrusting the league — and men’s soccer in the U.S. — to a level of global recognition it hasn’t yet dribbled in.
“It is a surprise because the MLS is, was not, like the Italian or English or Spanish tournaments, you know? This is really good news for the MLS because I think it’s going to bump it, it will bring the level up,” Sundblad said.
A ‘seismic’ impact
Pablo Maurer, a writer for The Athletic covering the MLS, said Messi’s arrival to the league has the potential to create a far-reaching, “seismic” impact.
“All these leagues globally, they have a one-century head start on MLS. Soccer in America generally has a long way to go before it’s at that level,” Maurer told NBC News.
Maurer compared Messi’s arrival to the late Brazilian soccer icon Pelé joining the New York Cosmos, which is part of the North American Soccer League, in 1975.
“Back then soccer was really nothing to speak of in America and Pelé made that team in that league a very big deal for a few years and sort of planted the seeds of soccer fandom,” Maurer said.
The state of soccer in the U.S. is already well established compared to when Pelé inherited it. MLS comprises 29 teams and has seen major European legends like Zlatan Ibrahimović, Thierry Henry, Steven Gerrard and more arrive since then.
But the world’s best player didn’t just come to America: His new home of Miami, which some refer to as Latin America’s northernmost city, has a built-in fan base for whom soccer is more than just a sport.
Maria Carina Cortes, a Key Biscayne-based realtor from Argentina who was also at the ceremony, says that after 28 years in the U.S. she no longer feels like she has the Argentinian flag “inside of my veins, in my blood.” But at the stadium on Sunday, her patriotism was palpable.
“The Messi mania is crazy,” Cortes said. “It was unbelievable, everybody screaming ‘Messi! Messi! Messi!’ I had piel de gallina,” she said, using the Spanish phrase for “goosebumps.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
