‘Life more than money’ Messi heads to Miami for ’78 billion’ a year… Beckham welcomed as “close to Argentina”

Lionel Messi’s move to U.S. professional soccer’s Major League Soccer (MLS) club Inter Miami is reportedly worth up to $60 million (about 78.5 billion won) a year. Inter Miami owner David Beckham, 48, joked that Messi, who turned down a lucrative offer from Saudi Arabia to join his team, “seems to have made the move to be closer to his native Argentina.”

Forbes, a U.S. publication, citing Spain’s El País, reported on Wednesday (Aug. 3) that Messi’s salary at Inter Miami ranges from $50 million to $60 million (about $65.4 billion). That’s about nine times less than the $545 million ($713.4 million) that Saudi Arabia’s Al-Hilal recently offered Messi.

Messi, who is a free agent after his contract with Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) expired at the end of last season, recently announced his move to Inter Miami. He was torn between returning to his hometown club Barcelona and Al Hilal, who offered him an astronomical salary, but he chose Inter Miami, whose owner is English soccer star David Beckham. “I didn’t want the players at Barcelona to drop their salaries or go to another team because of me,” Messi explains, “If I wanted money, I would have gone to Saudi Arabia, but that wasn’t the case.”먹튀검증

Lionel Messi, captain of the Argentina national soccer team. /AFPBBNews=News1

Lionel Messi greets the pens. /AFPBBNews=News1
At a recent leadership seminar, Beckham said, “A couple weeks ago I got over a million messages. I don’t normally get that many messages. It was obvious something had happened,” he said, recalling that Messi had just announced he was coming to Inter Miami. “But this didn’t surprise me,” he continued, “because I always promised the fans that I would bring the best players to Miami. It’s a great moment for me to have a player who wants to play for us, even if he’s not necessarily the best player.”

Outside of Inter Miami, Beckham co-owns a stake in English lower league side Salford City with a group of former Man Utd teammates known as the ‘Class of 92’. “Messi’s home country of Argentina is closer to Miami than Salford,” Beckham joked when asked why he didn’t go to Salford City and instead went to Inter Miami. I think that was a big attraction for him,” he laughed.

Messi’s debut is expected to be on July 22 in a League Cup match against Cruz Azul. When Messi’s move to Miami was confirmed early last month, the secondary market for tickets to his expected debut jumped 16 times in one day, and tickets for the rest of the season’s games sold like hotcakes. Currently, Miami Inter is not doing well, sitting at the bottom of the MLS Eastern Conference. It will be interesting to see if Messi can elevate Inter’s fortunes.