The irony is that even in the old American sports world with its old priorities, Miami was now a center of interest. Luis Araz, a Venezuelan baseball player on the local team, averaged 400 batters, threatening to match a Ted Williams record from 1941.
In years past, this would have caused the New York press to go south by train. In the modern sports world, the city currently plays in both the NBA Finals and the Ice Hockey Finals. But all that is interesting is tomorrow's world. And Leo Messi - perhaps on the verge of stepping down from the stage of history in favour of Kylian Mbappe or Erling Haaland - becomes at once the big story of the city. Continent. World.
Messi's decision to move to Inter Miami // Reuters
It's a story of reading the game and a story of location. Two qualities that were the basis for two breathtaking decades we received from Messi. While his legendary rival Cristiano Ronaldo is taking huge money to try to polish the image of the dark country in which he plays, Messi has come to connect cultures.
I've been staying in South Beach, Miami for the NBA Finals for the past few days. I was last here a quarter of a century ago for the same reason. The lack of English for many of the residents was explained at the time by the fact that they were first-generation immigrants. But this is a mistake. This is not an immigrant city on its way to assimilating into being an American city. Other than the weather, it's not a melting pot. It is a South American city within the United States. With local culture and music. Linguistics experts are even documenting the future formation of a Hispanic-English language.
Leo Messi. Author of cultures, photo: AFP
I spoke the other day with a Hispanic teenager who stars in basketball in local parks. I asked him how, as a Hispanic teenager, he preferred basketball to baseball. His answer surprised me. Most of his generation plays football. The dream of becoming Americans through baseball has passed. They connect to the branch from home. And Leo Messi will arrive in a region of the world whose part is much more reminiscent of South America than the elegant Barcelona.
Not like Ronaldo
I'll take you back more than a decade to the U.S. Federation press briefing during the World Cup in South Africa. They talked about the David Beckham project, soon to be Messi's boss, who played for the Los Angeles Galaxy. It has been described with great success in bringing a "traditional sports crowd"—a euphemism for "white people"—onto the field. The lots today are full. Messi will bring something else: the connection to an audience that can truly turn soccer in the United States into something globally competitive.
In the same conversation, another idea rolled out. Regarding the situation in which European money is actually destroying South American club football. Any junior star would rather play for Wolves than for Flamengo, Nacional or River Plate. The future grand plan is the unification of the Americas. Imagine this: a Champions League from Rio to Toronto, with teams in Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Medellín, Mexico City, New York, Miami and Chicago. With North American primetime broadcast hours. This is a much more dramatic change than "sheikhs give money." Messi's money is going to come from companies like Apple. They know a thing or two about how to earn it back.
Cristiano Ronaldo. The same interest in money,
The day of the Union of the Americas is not necessarily near. Partly because of a corrupt establishment in the South American associations. But it's not science fiction. In 2016, the first experiment was conducted with a joint North-South Copa America Centinero. Messi lost the final on penalties.
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Now, in South Beach. At the physical point where the Americas meet linguistically and culturally, Messi came to connect continents.
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