© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
To noone’s surprise, Lionel Messi has been chosen as the MVP of the 2025 MLS season, receiving the Landon Donovan Trophy for the league’s most valuable player for the second successive year.
He scored 35 goals and had 28 assists in 34 games. Argentina’s Clarin newspaper is decidedly agog, mentioning the fact how Messi’s team Inter Miami scored 101 goals and “Messi was involved in 63 of them”.
Messi had joined Inter Miami in July 2023, midway through the season, when the team was in the last place of the domestic league. In 2024, he played from January to December, winning the MVP, but his team was ejected in the first round of playoffs.
2025 has been a great year for Messi and his team, though as they won the MLS Cup. “It’s a joy because when we arrived at this club it was a great challenge to be able to take it to the top, because it was a new club,” Messi had told DSports. Inter Miami was founded in 2018 by American brothers Jose and Jorge Canosa and former England international David Beckham. They had never won a league title, but since Messi joined them, they have won the Leagues Cup, the Supporters’ Shield, and now the MLS cup.
Messi said that the goal was “to win the MLS Cup so the club continues to grow and reach the top. This year we had so many games, so much competition. We competed, we reached finals, semifinals, we went to the Club World Cup, we did very well.”
The 38-year old Argentine star has now won 34 titles with Barcelona, three with Inter Miami, three with PSG and six with Argentina’s national team that includes the 2022 world cup and the two Copa America triumphs.
Lionel Messi has finally agreed to a new contract with Inter Miami, a deal that required several months to complete and ensures that the sport’s biggest icon will be with the Major League Soccer club for its planned move into a new stadium next year. “To enjoy him, watching him enjoy doing the things he is doing, he’s very, very competitive and he tries to translate that to the team,” Inter Miami coach Javier Mascherano said “The best way to help him is trying to do the right things … he has to be comfortable on the pitch. He’s comfortable when things are working in the right way. With him, when we do things the right way, we’ll have many chances to have success.”
