How Messi-to-Miami became the biggest, longest tease in sports — and why it better happen | Opinion

So here comes the latest in the growing parade of indications that the biggest sports star on the planet — maybe of all time! — is coming to Miami. Eventually. Probably. Maybe?

Anticipation is a wonderful thing. Nothing like a good tease. A little foreplay. But how long are we going to be left dangling and hoping and perhaps even believing but never quite knowing?

Lionel Messi, can you make it official? Please?

Leo (if I may), can you just say, “Yes. I want to play in America. For Inter Miami. That’s the plan.” Or can you just say anything to at least help validate the speculation and sort of officially bless Miami as a part of your end game?

David Beckham, we would gladly accept the same from you on behalf of Inter Miami.

Because at this point, after all these tea leaves and signs, if that doesn’t happen, it will be an epic, colossal disappointment. And Inter Miami, though it never had a binding deal to begin with (that we know of), will be a seen as having failed majorly on its most grandiose gambit.

Messi-to-Miami has turned into an endless engagement. Time to put a ring on it.

The latest: Inter Miami’s chief business officer, Xavier Asensi, one of the club’s three highest-ranking executives under owners Jorge and Jose Mas and Beckham, leaving little doubt in an interview that the third-year Major League Soccer club is targeting Messi as the centerpiece of a grand plan.

Asensi used to be an executive with Barcelona, Messi’s longtime former club team and the one that will forever be associated with him. Messi stunned world futbol by leaving for Paris Saint-Germain last year, but his eventual return to Barcelona, as a player or in some capacity, seems certain.

Inter Miami happens to host Barcelona on Tuesday night in the first of four preseason friendlies on a U.S. tour as Barca prepares for its La Liga season opening on August 12.

Beckham and Inter Miami’s chummy relationship with Barca, one of the three biggest club team brands in the world, is the foundation of all Messi-to-Miami chatter.

Which gained volume with Asensi’s comments to El Mundo Deportivo, a Spanish national sports newspaper.

Asked if signing players like Messi is an objective for Inter Miami, he said: “Yes, with some caveats. You can’t compare Leo Messi with any other player; he’s different. Having said that, what we’re looking for is to be the reference point for football in the U.S., and to do that, the important thing is the players and the show that you can put on. You need the best players, and having them is a genuine objective at this club. In terms of Leo Messi, there’s him and then there’s everyone else.”

Asensi added, “It depends on him and what he wants. We want to have the best players in the world, and I think Messi is the best in history. From there it’s up to him.”

Messi, the renowned Argentine forward, is 35 but still atop his game, and the sport. His contract with PSG is up next year.

He has said he wants to experience MLS to wrap up his career. He owns a lavish $7.3 million condo on Sunny Isles Beach just north of Miami. A year ago Spanish media reported Messi planned a two-year swansong with Inter Miami before retiring back to Barcelona. Tea leaves, everywhere. The kettle is whistling.

Inter Miami has not been a smashing success. Yet. But signs point north. At the MLS season’s midpoint the Herons are only two points off playoff pace and just acquired 2020 MLS MVP Alejandro Pozuelo.

Asensi stating Inter Miami aims to be “the reference point for football in the U.S.” is in keeping with the club’s big talk. When the city finally approved the club’s Miami Freedom Park stadium initiative in late April, Jorge Mas said the facility would make Miami “the centerpiece of futbol in the world,” and he promised “the best players in the world” would be representing Inter Miami.

Messi is 35, yes. Miami might get him at, what, 37 or 38? That’s OK. He is still great, but the perfume of greatness will be his forever.

Messi-to-Miami would dwarf LeBron James taking his talents to South Beach as an international sensation of a story. He would instantly surpass Dan Marino and Dwayne Wade as the biggest global sports star to ever wear a professional sports uniform in Miami.

He would personify Beckham’s grandest vision, and Inter Miami highest aim and greatest potential.

The centerpiece of the soccer world is Messi.

The world stage would arrive with him.

Now, after all of this buildup and speculation growing into assumption, it had better happen.