‘Messi Meets America’ Is Missing Lionel Messi

Messi Meets America, a splashy new docuseries for Apple TV+ about Argentinian soccer god Lionel Messi’s move to MLS club Inter Miami after leading his home country to a dramatic World Cup win, opens with Messi ruminating on his shock decision to leave Paris Saint-Germain and, to quote another all-time great before him, take his talents to South Beach.  

“Soccer became difficult,” offers Messi. “Which was one of the reasons why I made the decision to enjoy again what I had lost.”

It’s about as deep as Messi gets in the series’ first three episodes, which debut on the streaming platform Oct. 11 — with three more to come later this year — which is a shame because many viewers, this one included, are tuning in eager to learn more about the soccer G.O.A.T. who’s now become the face of the sport stateside.

And Messi’s is a fascinating story. The son of blue-collar factory workers, Messi’s been playing on soccer clubs since he was four, and overcame a hormone deficiency disorder as well as the passing of his beloved grandmother, Celia, who would always attend his matches. To this day, he points up at the sky after every goal to honor of her. He cut his teeth on the “Baby Dream Team” as a teen, and eventually led Barcelona to four UEFA Champions League titles while experiencing a series of devastating losses in the World Cup prior to that historic 2022 run. You won’t find any of that in the series’ first three episodes, which run around 35 minutes each.

Athlete-approved docs are all the rage these days, from Michael Jordan’s The Last Dance to Derek Jeter’s The Captain to David Beckham’s Beckham, offering audiences a heavily curated and sanitized version of history through the eyes of a beloved sports icon. But those docs at least gave us a sense of who these people are, and how their thorny personal histories propelled them to greatness — while occasionally dipping a toe in fun, fan service-y waters (Jordan laughing hysterically at Gary Payton, Jeter addressing his feud with A-Rod, Beckham dancing around those affair reports). The first three episodes of this Apple TV+ docuseries are purely focused on Messi’s time at Inter Miami and devote far more screen time to his Inter Miami teammates and coach than they do its bright, shining star.

In fact, all of Messi’s commentary during the first batch of Messi Meets America episodes seem to be culled from a single sit-down interview with Messi. Forget any fly-on-the-wall scenes, mic’d-up moments, or amusing B-roll. And all of Messi and his merry men’s observations mostly boil down to how happy he is to be there, and how happy his young teammates are to be mentored by soccer studs like Messi, his former Barça teammate Sergio Busquets, and Jordi Alba. The docuseries does do a decent job of capturing the excitement surrounding Messi’s Miami arrival, including interviews with Hispanic folks in Miami bursting with pride, and an Inter Miami equipment manager who can’t believe how much his #10 jersey is selling. In one amusing scene, we see him sorting through a new box of Messi jerseys to find that only 13 are available due to the incredible demand. Inter Miami’s match with FC Dallas caused so much hysteria that the Dallas coach says, “I’ve never seen anything like that. We recently had Taylor Swift play for us and it’s about the closest thing I’ve seen to that.”

It is Beckham, the president and co-owner of Inter Miami, who’s credited with bringing Messi to America — the result of a years-long courtship process.

“From day one, I always wanted Leo,” Beckham says in the doc. “And the only way that we were gonna change this sport, and bring a sport like this — the biggest sport in the world — into the biggest sporting market in the world… was to bring Leo Messi to Miami.” (It should be noted that the late, great Pelé was the trailblazer here, moving from Santos to the New York Cosmos in 1975, but is not shouted-out in the first few episodes.)

“He guided me and told me a little bit about his experience,” Messi says of Beckham, who famously jumped from Real Madrid to the LA Galaxy. “What it had been like for him to come and play here, when he made the decision, but at the same time he told me that things now were not the same because the league had grown a lot since his arrival.”

Beckham insists that Messi, who reportedly signed a 2.5-year-deal with Inter Miami for $50-60 million annually plus team equity, is there in Miami “for the long-term,” but he’s 36 years old, so that seems like a dubious claim.

“I came with great enthusiasm,” offers Messi. “My wife and I and our children have really been enjoying ourselves. And we’ve been talking about what this could mean for us. And it was a nice start.”

There is a bit of drama to be had. When Messi (then Busquets, then Alba) joined Inter Miami, they were in the throes of an 11-game losing streak, sitting dead last in their conference. And the Messi Effect seems instant, with the star entering midway through his debut match against Cruz Azul and nailing a last-minute free kick to win it.

“The truth is, it was crazy how it happened,” says Messi. “Not even in my wildest dreams did I imagine it playing out that way.”

Inter Miami appears reinvigorated by Messi, and win a series of matches en route to a Leagues Cup Tournament win, earning La Pulga his 44^th trophy, the most of any player in the sport. That’s where the first three episodes end, with the next three still in production and without a release date in sight.

Messi Meets America seems, more than anything, like a marketing stunt. Last year, Apple paid $2.5 billion to MLS for 10 years of exclusive broadcasting rights. Messi, in turn, inked an unprecedented revenue-sharing agreement with Apple, earning a piece of the revenue from new subscribers to Apple TV+’s MLS Season Pass streaming service. Messi’s Inter Miami debut in July led to a surge in new subscribers to MLS Season Pass, with 110,000 new signups, according to The Wall Street Journal. If you’ve been paying any attention to Inter Miami since that Leagues Cup Tournament triumph, however, you’d know that things went very south from there. Messi suffered a hamstring injury, and the team missed the playoffs, ending up second to last in the conference.

In the “scenes from the next” portion of Messi Meets America, a reporter covering Inter Miami muses, “I’ve never seen so much excitement for a last-place team.”

From Rolling Stone US.