Lionel Messi to MLS?.. The Saga Starts Part 1 [R]

MLSsoccer.com. I scrolled through them too.

I don't necessarily agree that the third best team in MLS this season deserves the top officials.

 

I haven't gotten the sense that the refs are favoring Messi - not obviously so anyway, in my estimation. I've seen him get tackled many times, on the ground looking for a foul, but "play on". And he seems to rarely get PKs, though to his credit he generally doesn't dive. Suarez OTOH is gamesmanship all the way. Very dishonest player.

 

Of course you have to define 'superstar', but there were plenty of known top talent between the two of them: Kaka; Rooney; and Zlatan to name a few.

 

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2dL7THFSZy8

#nflexplainstheworld

 

Those other guys who came were way past their expiration dates.

Also, Zlatan was 37 when he came came, he scored a bunch of goals winning nothing , left and bad mouthed the league at every turn.

Kaka was washed up when he came.

Rooney was ok but also didn’t last and when he came back as a coach , was a disaster.

How about Mbappé or Harry Kane?

Sooner or later , MLS needs to sign younger players as opposed to more over 35’s!

 

That's why I'd have to say one would need to define the criteria. It's not like Messi is in his prime either. He looks like a superstar in MLS, but he's far from his superstar status.

 

He's still a superstar. Check his 8 goal contributions in 7 2026 World Cup qualifying games.

 

I’m not saying that the better teams DESERVE better refs, I’m just saying that’s the way referee assignors work, and it gives refs a target to work towards. I.e., if I’m a better ref, I get the bigger games. OTOH, there is also plenty of politics in play at all levels, so even if you are a good ref, you need to have the assignor like you as well as tournament/league officials.

In other words, it’s like any other job. To get promoted, it helps to have the key people like you.

 

But there's an inherent assumption there that the bigger games involve Inter Miami. That's only the case when they play New York City.

 

I sold my Quakes Messi tickets for $895 each. I think that says MIA is a pretty big game… Playing to a sold out extra large stadium also = a pretty big game. Refereeing in front of a sold-out stadium = a pretty tough game.

 

Exchange rate 25 cents American?

 

Just slightly more than USD 67

 

67?

 

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Friday, December 5, 2025​

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From Gerd Müller to Lionel Messi, Fort Lauderdale has been home to soccer’s greats​

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by Paul Kennedy​

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Gerd Müller posing in 1979 with the Fort Lauderdale Strikers. (Photo: Imago)​

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One of the few reminders of soccer's early years in Fort Lauderdale is the Ambry. ​

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Located about three miles from Chase Stadium, site of Saturday's MLS Cup, on the way to Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, the Ambry sits in a strip mall surrounded by chiropractor offices, a scuba shop and a pet-food store.​

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From the street, it looks like a small castle. Inside it's a restaurant with a bar area on one side and multiple dining rooms, serving up all kinds of German food and a selection of German beers. It also sells steaks and other American fare though on my visit I went for a plate of bratwurst with red cabbage and sauerkraut.​

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The Ambry started out in 1981 as a steakhouse before concentrating on German food. Its original owner was Gerd Müller, the legendary forward who scored the winning goal for West Germany in the 1974 World Cup final and moved five years later to finish his playing career with the Fort Lauderdale Strikers.​

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It's early December, and the Ambry is already covered with Christmas decorations, but if you look closely between them and the rows of beer mugs you'll find soccer memorabilia, mostly of Bayern Munich, the club for which Müller starred.​

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"We get lots of German tourists," my server says. "We're a museum for them. They look around in every room and take pictures."​

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Müller did not own the restaurant for long, but the Ambry's most popular soccer item, in a trophy case, is one of his Golden Boots awarded for his scoring prowess. He returned to Germany, where — after rehabilitating from alcoholism — he was given a coaching job at Bayern. He was later diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and died in a nursing home in 2021 at age 75.​

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Müller was one of the many soccer greats who gravitated to the Strikers at the height of the NASL. Gordon Banks, England's goalkeeper on the 1966 World Cup championship team, played on the Strikers in 1977-78, George Best came in 1978, and Peruvian great Teófilo Cubillas arrived the next year along with Müller.​

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As soccer markets go, South Florida was relatively early on the American scene.​

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It was not part of the original launch of pro soccer in the United States and Canada in 1967 and 1968, but the Washington Darts relocated to Miami as one of only eight teams in the North American Soccer League for the 1972 season.​

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The first reference to the Miami Gatos in Soccer America was in the Feb. 22, 1972, issue of what was then Soccer West with a story on their introductory press conference in Miami Beach.​

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"Coach Sal DeRosa," SA reported, "has been carefully looking over the North American Soccer League’s eligibility rules in hopes of one day drafting Pedro as a lightning-fast halfback for a team that already promises to be as quick, durable, and tenacious as the cat’s larger relatives."​

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Pedro was a 4-month-old puma brought out for the presser.​

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The Gatos never got to draft Pedro. They lasted one season before being sold to a group that included Joe Robbie, who owned the Miami Dolphins, and renamed the soccer team the Toros.​

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The Toros played in Miami for four seasons before moving up the road to Fort Lauderdale, where the Strikers played at Lockhart Stadium, a high school football stadium. They were an immediate success, enjoying winning records in their first six outdoor seasons and drawing at their peak 14,360 fans a game in 1980.​

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A big reason for the success of the Strikers and other NASL teams in those early years was the work players and coaches did to sell the sport.​

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In 1978, the Strikers lost their first three games, putting the job of their coach, Rob Newman, in jeopardy. Ahead of their fourth game at Lockhart Stadium, the Strikers organized a funeral procession complete with a hearse and coffin. Newman jumped out of the coffin, grabbed a microphone and exclaimed: “We’re not dead yet!”​

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But as fast as the Strikers and the NASL rose, they died. The Strikers moved to Minnesota, Robbie's home state, after the 1983 NASL season. The league folded after the 1984 season.​

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There were multiple efforts to restart the Strikers. The Robbie family owned the Strikers when the modest ASL launched in 1978. The Strikers later played in the new NASL, where they were owned by Traffic USA, which was at the center of the FIFA bribery scandal that rocked the soccer world in 2015.​

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The Miami Fusion played at Lockhart Stadium for four years in MLS before the league pulled the plug on the Fusion and Tampa Bay Mutiny in 2001, downsizing to 10 teams in an attempt to stay afloat.​

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Chase Stadium is another connection to soccer's early years in Fort Lauderdale and a reminder of how different things are. It sits on the site of Lockhart Stadium and is the temporary home of Inter Miami until it moves into Miami Freedom Park next season.​

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When Inter Miami came along, it needed a place to play until it could build a stadium in Miami. It built a temporary home at Lockhart Stadium, which was rundown and overgrown with weeds. Many MLS teams have played in loaner stadiums until they built their own stadiums, but Inter Miami's owners, Jorge and Jose Mas and David Beckham, went out and built a stadium and training complex that opened in 2020 at cost of $60 million.​

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They later spent far more than that on Lionel Messi and the current Inter Miami team that also includes Sergio Busquets, Rodrigo De Paul, Jordi Alba and Luis Suárez. ​

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Like Müller, Messi, Busquets and De Paul are all former World Cup champions. ​

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Unlike the days of the Strikers with Newman pulling publicity stunts, Inter Miami does not have a problem selling itself, though.​

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The Miami Herald reported that as of Wednesday morning, the cheapest prices for tickets to Saturday's Inter Miami-Vancouver MLS Cup at Chase Stadium on TicketMaster were in the $320 range and they went up to $3,000 for front row seats.​

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Inevitably, Inter Miami wins
by Paul KennedyDecember 6, 2025

Inter Miami is MLS champion.

The Whitecaps Whitecaps dominated MLS Cup for long stretches and should have gone ahead in the second half.

But Lionel Messi then took over, assisting on goals by Rodrigo De Paul and Tadeo Allende to give Inter Miami a 3-1 win for its first MLS championship.

On the goal-ahead goal in the 71st minute, Messi stole the ball from Paraguayan Andrés Cubas, but it would be an exaggeration to describe Messi as a pickpocket. Cubas laid the out for the Argentine to take the ball away and feed De Paul with a through ball (2-1).

Brought to Miami this summer to be Messi’s bodyguard, De Paul broke through and scored the winning goal.

Miami’s third goal in stoppage time was vintage Messi. He played down a looping pass off his chest and then flicked the ball ahead to the charging Allende, who scored his record-setting ninth goal of these MLS playoffs (3-1).



For most of the game, though, Messi rarely saw the ball or could nothing with it when he had it.
He had a hand in Inter Miami’s opening goal, playing another looping ball into the path of Allende, whose pass was played into the Vancouver goal by Caps defender Edier Ocampo in the 8th minute (1-0).
But something then happened on the way to the Miami coronation party.
The Whitecaps took control of the match and inevitably equalized on Ali Ahmed’s goal that Miami keeper Rocco Ríos Novo pushed into his own goal (1-1).
“We had the game where we wanted it,” said Vancouver coach Jesper Sørensen.
Minutes later, winger Emmanuel Sabbi should have put the Whitecaps ahead, but his shot unbelievably hit both posts.

 

No

No relation, but Thomas Müller looks a little bit like Gerd Müller.

 

They're both German. Clearly a racist statement. (joking!)

 

David Beckham thanks Lionel Messi for Inter Miami's MLS Cup victory: 'The greatest of all time'

 

…the rich get richer. What a shock…

 

Messi Jordi Busi

 

¡ADIÓS, VAQUEROS!

Sergio Busquets y Jordi Alba ponen fin a sus carreras tras ganar la MLS Cup con el Inter de Miami

Leyendas del FC Barcelona, de la Selección Española y del fútbol mundial. Gracias por tantos recuerdos, cracks

 

That's the most AI like non-AI photo I've seen.