🐐🇸🇻 Why is Lionel Messi playing a friendly in El Salvador?
Inter Miami meets La Selecta tonight
I don’t know.
It isn’t the most satisfying answer, but I still haven’t quite been able to work out why Lionel Messi and Inter Miami are playing a friendly tonight in San Salvador.
The other games on Messi’s preseason tour make some sense. Messi has a partnership with Saudi Arabia’s tourism agency and will be touring the country. Along the way, he’ll play a match against Cristiano Ronaldo, his forever rival with whom any meeting will be must-see TV for anyone who was a soccer fan in the 2010s (or at least aggregating accounts on social media will treat it like it is). He later visits Japan for a match that was being billed as reuniting with old friend Andres Iniesta before the Spaniard decamped for the UAE and has the romantic matchup with Newell’s Old Boys, the club where Messi developed before moving to Barcelona.
Even the game against FC Dallas in the Cotton Bowl gives Inter Miami one ‘traditional’ MLS preseason match and fits in nicely with the travel schedule (even if the ticket prices are out of control).
The answer, as it so often does, seems to come down to money.
Tonight’s friendly is being promoted by MetaShow, a relatively new Salvadoran agency headed by Yessenia Egli. Egli has experience putting on big events in the United States and El Salvador but largely has been in the concert space
“It was hard to believe because it’s so big, he’s the man of the hour right now, he’s a world champion, so people don’t believe it or didn’t believe it,” she told a Salvadoran radio station this week. “I hope they believe it now with the official list out, right?”
In the same interview Egli noted that several different clubs were offered up as the opponent, but Inter Miami opted for the national team.
In addition to promoting concerts, and now sports, the same company also has a stake in a new bar attached to the stadium where the match will take place, the Estadio Cuscatlan. The bar, which also boasts a kitchen with a French menu, is just one of a number of renovations made to the national stadium after the tragic crowd crush in May 2023. That incident left a dozen people attending a quarterfinal match between Alianza and FAS dead.
Egli’s company is reportedly investing in other soccer projects and the CEO said she wants to bring more big events to the country. “Barcelona, Real Madrid, teams from Mexico. There are a lot of big sports, which could also include the NBA,” she told Cancha.
Whether or not any of those events come to fruition - and the seemingly slow ticket sales for the Inter Miami match, which starts at $200 plus fees per ticket, doesn’t bode well - Messi and Co. are turning up in El Salvador to kick off its preseason tour.
You can try to cobble together a sporting reason as well for Inter Miami’s visit to Central America. It’s a region they may need to return to in Concacaf Champions Cup play, though it’s far more likely the first international trip the Herons would make would be to Mexico.1
Still, it’s tough to have any faith that this game will actually show us anything about either team. While it used to be commonplace in the region, it’s rare we get a mid-tier Concacaf international team playing a club. Plus, it’s difficult to know exactly what to expect from Inter Miami in the 2024 campaign. This team won the Leagues Cup when Messi was at his best but struggled to match that form during the close of the regular season.
“We’re going to try to mark him like he and the entire Inter Miami team are any other player,” said Harold Osorio, the current Chicago Fire II player. But not only is it Messi, Sergio Busquets and friends against El Salvador, Inter Miami will - for the first time since Tata Martino’s arrival as manager - have more time together than the other team.
El Salvador players know each other well, especially with veteran midfielder Darwin Ceren and experienced forward Nelson Bonilla back in the team. But this is the debut for manager David Dóniga, who took over just a few weeks ago when Rubén de la Barrera left for a club job.
Expect El Salvador to look disjointed. La Selecta is seeking more friendly matches in March and beyond for good reason. This team isn’t ready for the big time yet.
So, why is Lionel Messi playing a friendly in El Salvador? I guess why not? Might be fun? Might make some money? Definitely a sign of the times we live in and how teams are operating.
Shout out to Salvadoran virtuoso Rodrigo Arias, who I always reach out to for background when I write on El Salvador.
If Comunicaciones gets past Monterrey and then past the winner of FC Cincinnati v. Jamaican squad Cavalier, AND Inter Miami advances past the Nashville SC v. Moca winner, then Inter would go to Central America. After that, it would take a shock run to the final from a Central American team.
Even this game and headlines that come from it seemed wild for your post you had over the summer about potential Concacaf headlines for Messi.
One correction: Iniesta is no longer with Vissel Kobe, he left Japan in the summer. He's now playing with Emirates in the UAE.