Lionel Messi to Inter Miami negotiations took three years – owner. Inter Miami CF owner Jorge Mas said it took him three years of negotiations to bring Lionel Messi to the Major League Soccer club. A 2022 World Cup winner with Argentina, Messi announced last month he will join Inter Miami as a free agent after two seasons at Paris Saint-Germain. “In 2019 [when Messi was still at Barcelona], we started thinking about how we could bring him,” Mas told Spanish newspaper El Pais. “I spent three years on it, a year-and-a-half [working] very intensely. There were many conversations with [Messi’s father and agent] Jorge. [Inter Miami co-owner] David [Beckham] talked to Leo, only about football issues, because he was a player.” Messi, 36, had initially considered a return to Barca, the club he had left in 2021 due to its financial crisis, while he also rejected a lucrative deal from Saudi Arabia’s PIF fund to join Al-Hilal. “I saw it as done at the end of May,” Mas said. “I didn’t want him to feel under pressure. We had spoken in Barcelona, Miami, Rosario, Doha … I spent the whole World Cup in Qatar, watching Argentina. “The Apple contract was very important to close the deal.”
