Culture
How Miami moved to the epicenter of the global game – with a little help from Lionel Messi
“Miami loves football. The world loves football, and the world loves Miami.”
That was FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s claim on October 19 when he announced that Inter Miami, per FIFA’s convenient parameters, had qualified for next summer’s new-look Club World Cup in the United States.
Led by Lionel Messi, Inter Miami earned an invitation to the 32-team tournament (up from seven previously) after winning the Supporters’ Shield. That trophy is awarded to the MLS side with the best record over the 34-game regular season. Miami also set a new regular season points record with 74.
“You’re the best team of the season in America,” Infantino said. “You can start telling your story to the world.”
Inter Miami co-owner Jorge Mas called it “an honor” to participate in the Club World Cup, with David Beckham summing up Miami’s moment. “This was always about creating history for Miami,” he said.
The four-year-old club will now host the opening match of the Club World Cup at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium on June 15, nine days before Messi’s 38th birthday. If the Argentina captain does not play on so he can participate in the 2026 World Cup co-hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada, the Club World Cup could be the last great opportunity to capitalize on Messi’s exorbitant global reach as a player.
Messi shakes hands with Infantino earlier this month (Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)
For FIFA to find a way to virtually guarantee that he is part of the inaugural playing of the revamped Club World Cup came as no surprise.
Messi’s takeover of American soccer coincides with FIFA’s own push into the North American market. The sport’s governing body has moved some of its offices and employees from Zurich in Switzerland to Florida, including the organization’s entire legal department. “We have more than 100 colleagues here working on legal and compliance matters and taking care of all the legal aspects of the company,” Emilio Garcia Silvero, FIFA’s chief legal and compliance officer, told The Athletic from its corporate offices in the Coral Gables district of Miami.
Logistically, it makes sense. The next men’s World Cup will be staged by three North and Central American nations. South America’s Brazil will host the 2027 women’s World Cup and the United States will vie for its 2031 edition. By establishing a presence in Miami, FIFA can strengthen its relationship with CONCACAF (North and Central America and the Caribbean) and CONMEBOL (South America), two confederations whose influence continues to grow.
“We knew we needed to open an office outside Europe, outside of Switzerland,” Garcia Silvero said. “And why Miami? It’s not just because Messi is here. Miami is the perfect hub for North America, Central America, and South America. It’s the perfect hub to be close to 50 FIFA members.”
If player transfers are what interest you most about world football, the FIFA legal and compliance office in Miami oversaw a record 74,836 cross-border moves in 2023, according to a spokesperson from the organisation. They also handled more than 18,000 cases and enquiries received by the FIFA Football Tribunal. Per FIFA, the majority of those cases were contractual disputes between clubs, players and coaches.
Whether intentionally or not, FIFA has linked its Miami move to Messi’s enormous presence in the city and to the wave of major tournaments that are coming to the United States. They’re not alone. The Argentina Football Association has plans to build multiple training facilities in the Miami area, ahead of the 2026 World Cup, where they will be defending champions (assuming they qualify).
Infantino told FIFA’s website from the pitch of Inter Miami’s current Chase Stadium home on October 19 that the organisation was there to “transform this country”, crediting the MLS club and its owners for the opportunity to “make football, soccer, the number one sport in North America”.
His idealism in regards to the continued growth of soccer in the U.S. contrasts with the realities the sport has always faced here. Soccer will never outgrow the NFL, or college-level American football. Soccer in America will never take over basketball’s NBA, a league whose international footprint continues to expand. Today, baseball isn’t America’s favorite pastime, but at this time of year, the country is hyper-focused on the MLB’s postseason, leading to the World Series.
Mas and Infantino at Chase Stadium (Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)
MLS and broadcast partner Apple want more people to see Messi play. Seems obvious, right? One of the sport’s greatest-ever players is the current face of American soccer. Messi is a celebrity with a 305 area code (the Miami region) who is on the verge of winning the league’s MVP award after a spectacular 19-game season.
But unless you’re an MLS Season Pass subscriber on Apple, the Messi and Inter Miami content you consume is boiled down to Instagram reels and YouTube highlights.
That’s not a particularly bad thing.
Messi is flying the MLS flag and he can move mountains with a soundbite or with an 11-minute hat trick on the last day of the MLS regular season. But Apple doesn’t release viewership numbers, so we don’t know what Messi’s impact has truly been. This refusal to do so, coupled with MLS’ historically low television numbers, would lead anyone with common sense to assume Apple’s 10-year $2.5billion (£1.9m) broadcast deal hasn’t delivered as expected.
That raises legitimate questions about Apple’s strategy to attract audiences to its MLS product. Messi represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that won’t last much longer, but the Messi brand has never gone head-to-head with American sports culture.
Generally speaking, sports other than soccer dominate the news cycle during the fall season (autumn) in the States. Clutter has always been an obstacle for MLS. To combat it, even ever so slightly, the league announced on October 3 that Inter Miami would begin its best-of-three series versus Atlanta United on a Friday. It would be the only MLS playoff match of the night, on October 25, and would be free on Apple TV.
On Saturday, the city of Miami would host a college football rivalry game between the University of Miami and Florida State University. Sunday would see the much-anticipated return for the NFL’s Miami Dolphins of star quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, after suffering a concussion on September 12. So Friday would be Inter Miami’s moment to shine.
Until it wasn’t.
When the New York Yankees clinched a spot in the World Series on October 19, MLS league officials and Apple executives must surely have groaned.
Apple and MLS had announced a series of promotions around Messi, including a dedicated camera that would follow the Inter Miami captain exclusively on the league’s Tik Tok account. It was a novel idea, but one that did little to move the needle.
The big swing was to broadcast Inter Miami’s match live in New York’s famous Times Square on a 78-foot digital TV display. But with the Yankees now playing in game one of the World Series in Los Angeles against the Dodgers at that time, the plan was scrapped. An MLS spokesperson told The Athletic on Saturday that the broadcast had been postponed until a later date.
Still, those who did watch Miami defeat Atlanta 2-1 saw a highly entertaining match. Game two is this Saturday, November 2, in Atlanta, where an expected crowd of 70,000 will provide MLS with another chance to showcase Messi to the rest of the world.
Messi in action against Atlanta United (Peter Joneleit/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Miami is becoming a focal point for FIFA. Spanish clubs Barcelona — Messi’s former side — and Atletico Madrid want to stage a La Liga fixture in the city. Simultaneously, Inter Miami’s popularity is surging. However, the club’s path to relevance from a television viewership standpoint has been largely in the dark. At best, it’s been witnessed by a mix of MLS’ loyal but niche U.S. fans and newcomers from around the world who subscribe to watch Messi.
Mas is the man responsible for bringing Messi to MLS. It wasn’t easy. There were many moments of uncertainty during the years-long courtship. And while much more should be done to market the MLS/Messi product, things couldn’t be going better for Miami.
“Four years ago, David (Beckham), myself and Jose (Mas) promised two things,” Mas said in front of a sellout crowd at Chase Stadium, in Fort Lauderdale, a short drive north of Miami, last week. “Number one is that the eyes of the world, when they think of ‘futbol’ in America, will be placed here. They’ll think of Inter Miami. Tonight I say, ‘Check’.”
GO DEEPER
Why European football matches might finally be coming to the U.S.
(Top photo: Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)
A famous poet once observed that it is difficult to get the news from poems. The weather is a different story. April showers, summer sunshine and — maybe especially — the chill of winter provide an endless supply of moods and metaphors. Poets like to practice a double meteorology, looking out at the water and up at the sky for evidence of interior conditions of feeling.
The inner and outer forecasts don’t always match up. This short poem by Louise Glück starts out cold and stays that way for most of its 11 lines.
And then it bursts into flame.
“Early December in Croton-on-Hudson” comes from Glück’s debut collection, “Firstborn,” which was published in 1968. She wrote the poems in it between the ages of 18 and 23, but they bear many of the hallmarks of her mature style, including an approach to personal matters — sex, love, illness, family life — that is at once uncompromising and elusive. She doesn’t flinch. She also doesn’t explain.
Here, for example, Glück assembles fragments of experience that imply — but also obscure — a larger narrative. It’s almost as if a short story, or even a novel, had been smashed like a glass Christmas ornament, leaving the reader to infer the sphere from the shards.
We know there was a couple with a flat tire, and that a year later at least one of them still has feelings for the other. It’s hard not to wonder if they’re still together, or where they were going with those Christmas presents.
To some extent, those questions can be addressed with the help of biographical clues. The version of “Early December in Croton-on-Hudson” that appeared in The Atlantic in 1967 was dedicated to Charles Hertz, a Columbia University graduate student who was Glück’s first husband. They divorced a few years later. Glück, who died in 2023, was never shy about putting her life into her work.
But the poem we are reading now is not just the record of a passion that has long since cooled. More than 50 years after “Firstborn,” on the occasion of receiving the Nobel Prize for literature, Glück celebrated the “intimate, seductive, often furtive or clandestine” relations between poets and their readers. Recalling her childhood discovery of William Blake and Emily Dickinson, she declared her lifelong ardor for “poems to which the listener or reader makes an essential contribution, as recipient of a confidence or an outcry, sometimes as co-conspirator.”
That’s the kind of poem she wrote.
“Confidence” can have two meanings, both of which apply to “Early December in Croton-on-Hudson.” Reading it, you are privy to a secret, something meant for your ears only. You are also in the presence of an assertive, self-possessed voice.
Where there is power, there’s also risk. To give voice to desire — to whisper or cry “I want you” — is to issue a challenge and admit vulnerability. It’s a declaration of conquest and a promise of surrender.
What happens next? That’s up to you.
Cold weather can serve as a plot point or emphasize the mood of a scene, and this week’s literary geography quiz highlights the locations of recent novels that work winter conditions right into the story. Even if you aren’t familiar with the book, the questions offer an additional hint about the setting. To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. At the end of the quiz, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.
When a writer is praised for having a sense of place, it usually means one specific place — a postage stamp of familiar ground rendered in loving, knowing detail. But Kiran Desai, in her latest novel, “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny,” has a sense of places.
This 670-page book, about the star-crossed lovers of the title and several dozen of their friends, relatives, exes and servants (there’s a chart in the front to help you keep track), does anything but stay put. If “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny” were an old-fashioned steamer trunk, it would be papered with shipping labels: from Allahabad (now known as Prayagraj), Goa and Delhi; from Queens, Kansas and Vermont; from Mexico City and, perhaps most delightfully, from Venice.
There, in Marco Polo’s hometown, the titular travelers alight for two chapters, enduring one of several crises in their passionate, complicated, on-again, off-again relationship. One of Venice’s nicknames is La Serenissima — “the most serene” — but in Desai’s hands it’s the opposite: a gloriously hectic backdrop for Sonia and Sunny’s romantic confusion.
Their first impressions fill a nearly page-long paragraph. Here’s how it begins.
Sonia is a (struggling) fiction writer. Sunny is a (struggling) journalist. It’s notable that, of the two of them, it is she who is better able to perceive the immediate reality of things, while he tends to read facts through screens of theory and ideology, finding sociological meaning in everyday occurrences. He isn’t exactly wrong, and Desai is hardly oblivious to the larger narratives that shape the fates of Sunny, Sonia and their families — including the economic and political changes affecting young Indians of their generation.
But “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny” is about more than that. It’s a defense of the very idea of more, and thus a rebuke to the austerity that defines so much recent literary fiction. Many of Desai’s peers favor careful, restricted third-person narration, or else a measured, low-affect “I.” The bookstores are full of skinny novels about the emotional and psychological thinness of contemporary life. This book is an antidote: thick, sloppy, fleshy, all over the place.
It also takes exception to the postmodern dogma that we only know reality through representations of it, through pre-existing concepts of the kind to which intellectuals like Sunny are attached. The point of fiction is to assert that the world is true, and to remind us that it is vast, strange and astonishing.
See the full list of the 10 Best Books of 2025 here.
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