Miami \u2013 Inter Miami and Lionel Messi have agreed to extend the Argentine superstar’s contract to remain in Major League Soccer (MLS) beyond next year’s World Cup, according to a source close to the matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The contract extension would ensure that 38-year-old remains in competitive action until and after the 2026 World Cup hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An official announcement is expected within the next two weeks, said the source contacted by AFP late Wednesday, and would mean Messi ending his career in the MLS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Messi moved to Inter Miami in 2023 after an unhappy stay at Paris Saint-Germain, but the rump of his stellar career was spent at Barcelona, where he played from 2004 to 2021 after coming through the youth system at the Spanish giants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At Barcelona he won the La Liga title 10 times and lifted the European Champions League trophy on four occasions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2022, he led Argentina to World Cup glory in Qatar and has expressed a desire to try to retain the trophy next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Messi was named the MLS Most Valuable Player in the 2024 season even though his team were eliminated in the playoffs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2025 he became the fastest player to reach 40 goals in MLS history.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Miami \u2013 Inter Miami and Lionel Messi have agreed to extend the Argentine superstar’s contract to remain in Major League Soccer (MLS) beyond next year’s World Cup, according to a source close to the matter. The contract extension would ensure that 38-year-old remains in competitive action until and after the 2026 World Cup hosted by […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10477,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[396,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10475"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}