Messi and why he chose the millionaire Miami to live his last years in football

Mayor Francis Suárez has called Miami “the capital of the capital”, due to the economic boom that has been going on for a decade. The attention Messi will attract is the perfect opportunity for this North Florida city, historically associated with excess and danger, to show the world what it has become.

The future is now

financial time has baptized Miami as “the most important city in America.” There are many ways to support it. In the last 15 years, it has been the country with the highest economic growth in the United States. The good climate, its infrastructure, low crime rates and low taxation have allowed this recent scenario of prosperity.

There are those who see Miami as a new Manhattan due to the development of new real estate projects. Many media wonder if it will become the new Silicon Valley. Historically, it has been a destination for retirees from all over the country. But the landscape is changing. In 2019, a study by Robert Half Technology revealed that Miami was the city that hired the most professionals in the technology industry. It has also become the most desired job destination for young professionals in this industry, above San Francisco, according to a report by the Jotform platform.

In May of this year, @AshleyDCan asked on Twitter which city she could move to that is friendly to cryptocurrency, marijuana, has job opportunities, and “lots to do.” Elon Musk replied: “Probably Miami.” Mayor Suárez upped the ante: “Definitely Miami.”

worth dreaming

The rise of the city and the rise of the Argentine champion have followed parallel paths. In August 2014, the writer Pamela Druckerman published in New York Times an article titled Miami grows. A bit, in which he painted a portrait of a changing city, which since 2008 had seen the proliferation of luxury condominiums and the rise of a vibrant art scene. “I think Miami is trying to find a way to be a center of ideas and brains,” urban studies theorist Richard Florida said at the time. Few glimpsed in those signs that a decade later there would be talk of the “Miracle of Miami.”

2008 was also special for Messi. In the middle of that year he finished the season with Barcelona for the first time with double digits in goals (16) and assists (13). It was also not obvious back then that he would become the greatest ever. Less than he would play in the MLS, although that was his dream. “I always had the illusion of living in the United States, of experiencing the league there,” he admitted in a 2020 interview with Spanish journalist Jordi Évole.

Lio now arrives crowned as world champion in the fashionable city. Also sports. The Miami Heat, finalist of the last edition of the NBA, were born there. It is also home to the Dolphins. This American football team is home to the Hard Rock Stadium, a multipurpose venue set up for the ATP Master 1000 tennis tournament. And since 2022, the most publicized date of the Formula 1 season has been held around this stadium. Prior to the Miami Grand Prix, the world’s most famous athletes and artists walk through the paddock of each team. Most likely, the ‘Flea’ will join them.

Welcome to Miami

The road to the current bonanza has been steep. In the 1980s, the police series Miami Vice he portrayed the city as a cocktail of parties, neon lights, drug dealing and violence. Fiction was a lot like reality. In 1981, there were 621 homicides by violent death, the highest number in Miami history. It has also been famous as a destination for millions of Latinos. The number of Peruvians, for example, exceeds 600,000, according to the Florida Census Bureau.

Today, Mayor Suárez boasts that Miami attracts both people from all over the world and big capital. In 2019, American billionaire Carl Icahn moved half of his investment fund’s operations from New York to Miami. So did his peer Ken Griffin, who moved the offices of his Citadel firm from Chicago in 2022.

The pandemic and teleworking triggered the migration of the high-income sector and also the middle class to South Florida. The United States Census Bureau estimates that more than 700,000 Americans moved to Miami between April 2020 and July 2022. They came mainly from New York, Chicago and the state of California. Messi is only the most famous of this new migratory wave.

Messi League Soccer

In this environment of opulence, high technology and development, the one that is out of place is Inter Miami. The pink team was founded in 2019 by the brothers Jorge and José Mas, two businessmen from the city and sons of Cuban Jorge Mas Canosa, a well-known opponent of Fidel Castro. Former English footballer David Beckham joined the project as a minority shareholder (10%), but also as an image.

For now, the impact of Inter Miami has been more media than football. In his three seasons in Major League Soccer (MLS) he has not won a title, nor has he reached the final stages. Nor in the MLS Cup. Today he is last in the general table of the Eastern Confederation. The stage doesn’t offer much glamor either: the club hosts the DRV PNK Stadium, a provisional structure for 18,000 spectators.

The leadership, however, is ambitious. In 2018, the construction of Miami Freedom Park was approved by referendum, a 52-hectare project with a cost of around 900 million dollars and which includes a stadium for 25,000 spectators, a technological development center, a 750-room hotel , parks and public soccer fields.

Messi is also presented with a sports project that goes beyond the club and seems like a direct path to play one last World Cup. In various interviews, the striker has said that he sees this option as very difficult. Today he is 35 years old and would arrive at the tournament at 39. However, the United States will host the 2024 Copa América and also host, along with Mexico and Canada, the 2026 World Cup. Thus, he has the opportunity to defend his two titles with Argentina without the cumbersome process of traveling to another country. Miami promises to make your life easier.

The sun don’t shine for everyone

The growth of the city in recent years also casts shadows on some of its inhabitants. Migration from other states, the return to office work and tourism have made Miami the ninth city with the worst traffic in the world, according to the study 2022 Global Traffic Scorecard. This costs each driver 105 extra hours in his car per year.

Getting a home, or keeping one, is not being easy for everyone either. A RealtyHop report ranked Miami in 2021 as the most expensive city to live in relation to the average income of its inhabitants. Lizzie Suarez, a spokeswoman for the activist group Miami Workers Center, told Los Angeles Times that in the two years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, 22,000 eviction proceedings had been registered in the city court.

In an open letter published in Trade, the Argentine journalist Andrés Oppenheimer congratulated Messi for moving to Miami, but warned him that not everything is going well there, that the governor of the state is the republican Ron DeSanti, a furious opponent of the LGBT community, immigration, abortion and the protection of the environment, but at the same time a promoter of the possession of weapons without permission. “Lionel, beware of anti-immigrant politicians like DeSantis or Trump,” Oppenheimer wrote. “Surely they will try to approach you to pretend that some of his best friends are Hispanic. Remember, Miami is great, but Florida not so much.”

The arrival of Messi will not solve the social problems of the city. It doesn’t even guarantee Inter Miami itself to win championships. There is only hope that the change of environment will allow him to recover the happiness that, he himself has admitted, he did not find in his two years at Paris Saint Germain. If that happens, he will score goals and may help the club to titles. Even for those less fortunate in Miami, the city has good things to offer, like the best soccer player in the world on the home team. It’s worth taking advantage of. For now, no one has put a price on the right to celebrate a good goal.