We’ve spent two summers being told the MLS All-Star Game doesn’t work without Lionel Messi. Tonight, with Messi and Inter Miami teammate Rodrigo De Paul both sitting out the league’s exhibition against Liga MX, MLS finally gets to test that theory under real conditions instead of hypotheticals. The early returns say the theory was wrong. Son Heung-min is putting up a joint MLS-best 10 assists for LAFC, Petar Musa leads the Golden Boot race with 13 goals for FC Dallas, and sportsbooks still have MLS as the favorite. That’s not a depleted roster playing out the string until the real season resumes. That’s a league making its own case, with or without him.
Why Isn’t Messi Playing Tonight?
Lionel Messi is not playing in Wednesday’s MLS All-Star Game against Liga MX. He and Inter Miami teammate Rodrigo De Paul were excused for individualized post-World Cup rest, part of an arrangement MLS and the players’ union have in place for players returning from deep World Cup runs. Messi’s run through this summer’s World Cup ended two weeks ago in a final loss to Spain, and Inter Miami decided that was enough soccer for one summer.
(Worth remembering: last year Messi skipped the All-Star Game without telling anyone first and came home to a one-game suspension for it. This year MLS and the club had the conversation ahead of time, which is either a healthier working relationship or just Messi learning what happens when he doesn’t return calls.)
Per Yahoo Sports, the absence was known well ahead of kickoff, which gave MLS time to build its broadcast and promotion around what’s actually on the field Wednesday at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte (8 p.m. ET, exclusively on Apple TV) instead of around who isn’t walking through the door.
What Son Heung-min and Petar Musa Are Actually Doing
Son Heung-min has three goals and a joint MLS-best 10 assists in his first full season with LAFC after arriving from Tottenham, and Petar Musa has 13 goals and 2 assists for FC Dallas, enough to lead the league’s Golden Boot race outright. (I watch more Bundesliga than is probably healthy, and I’ll say this: outscoring most of the strikers I watch every weekend, from a base in Dallas, is not nothing.) Both players featured at this summer’s World Cup, Son for South Korea and Musa scoring for Croatia, and both are walking straight from that stage into Wednesday’s game as the two best statistical arguments MLS has for itself.
Only one other Korean player has ever appeared in an MLS All-Star Game (Hong Myung-bo, back in 2003), and Son’s new locker room has been loud about having him. Multiple All-Stars, Thomas Muller among them, have specifically named Son as the opponent-turned-teammate they’re most excited to line up next to this week. Musa’s path here is quieter by comparison — he scored for Croatia at the World Cup, came back to Dallas, and kept scoring, without much of the attention that follows a designated player at a coastal club. A Golden Boot lead built in that kind of relative anonymity says as much about the league’s depth as Son’s assist count does. World Soccer Talk rounded up which World Cup names are actually featuring on Wednesday:
https://twitter.com/worldsoccertalk/status/2082223297471640014
Eleven players in Wednesday’s game were at the World Cup that just wrapped, nearly a quarter of the 45 MLS players who went. That’s the roster context that gets lost when the conversation starts and ends with who’s missing.
What the Odds Say About This MLS Roster
Sportsbooks have MLS as the outright favorite over Liga MX for Wednesday’s game, not the plucky host absorbing a beatdown. Per bet365, MLS is priced at +120, with Liga MX out at +162 and the draw the least likely outcome on the board. Bettingnews.com has similar numbers at a separate book, and MLS has won the last two meetings outright, including a 3-1 win in Austin last year — a fact conveniently absent from every “MLS can’t compete without Messi” take.
The roster math backs the pricing up. MLS is sending 29 players from 21 clubs, led by four from Nashville SC; Liga MX countered with 24 players from eight clubs, five of them from reigning champion Cruz Azul. Liga MX brought a more concentrated, more decorated top end. MLS brought volume, and right now that volume is outscoring and out-assisting it. Books don’t price exhibitions out of sentiment. They price them off form, and MLS’s form this summer includes the two players actually headlining Wednesday’s broadcast.
I think MLS makes the case for itself tonight, and I don’t think it’s especially close. A league that can produce a joint assists leader and an outright Golden Boot leader in the same summer it lost its two most famous players to a scheduled night off isn’t a league running on one man’s oxygen. It’s a league that finally has other reasons for people to show up. The obvious counter is that none of this moves a needle the way Messi trending on a Wednesday does, and MLS still needs him for the numbers that actually fund the league. But an exhibition that can be worth watching without its biggest star on the field is a healthier sign for where MLS is in July than one more Messi highlight reel would have been.
Watch what happens to Son’s profile if LAFC pushes into the playoff picture with him producing at this rate down the stretch. That’s the story that outlasts one Wednesday night in Charlotte, whichever way the odds hold up. For more from tonight and the rest of the summer, our soccer coverage has it covered.
