Inter Miami’s Messi MLS’ first back-to-back MVP winner

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida (AP):

Best player. Best team. Inter Miami's Lionel Messi is the unquestioned force in Major League Soccer right now, on a run like nobody else the league has ever seen.

The 38-year-old Argentine star -- and captain of the MLS Cup champions -- has become the first back-to-back MVP in MLS history, getting announced yesterday as this year's winner of the league's top individual honour.

Messi -- thanking his teammates and saying he couldn't have won the award without them -- accepted the trophy at the opening ceremony of his Messi Cup youth tournament, which kicked off yesterday. That's why the award announcement was delayed until after the season; Messi wanted kids to be part of it.

"He's a unicorn, man -- not just for what he does on the field," MLS Commissioner Don Garber said after the on-field ceremony in misty conditions. "He's just a special man."

The back-to-back MVPs represent another first for Messi in what seems like a never-ending list of his career accomplishments and was widely expected, almost assumed after he had a league-best 29 goals along with 19 assists during the regular season.

He also becomes just the second two-time MVP the league has ever seen, joining Preki, the winner of the award in 1997 and 2003. The other winners are all one-time MVP recipients.

Messi played in barely half of Inter Miami's regular-season games in 2024, and that sparked some doubt as to whether he deserved to win the MVP award.

He won a close vote last year. This year, there was no debate.

Messi got 70.4 per cent of the total vote -- the biggest winning total since Toronto's Sebastian Giovinco in 2015.

"There's something about the way he's wired," Garber said of Messi while attending an Inter Miami match earlier in this season's play-offs. "He's thinking about the game like nobody else ever has. His intensity and desire to win is what makes him the greatest of all time."

This award joins dozens of other individual honours in Messi's career, including eight Ballon d'Or titles, eight Pichichi trophies as La Liga's top scorer, six La Liga best player nods, three Best FIFA Men's Player awards, three UEFA Men's Player of the Year wins, two FIFA World Cup Golden Balls, and no fewer than 15 selections as Argentina's best player in a given year. He's also been part of winning 47 trophies for club and country -- including the 2022 World Cup -- making him the most decorated player the men's game has ever seen.

Messi becomes the sixth player in MLS history to win MVP and a championship in the same season. Of the previous five, only Atlanta United's Josef Martinez in 2018 won MVP, a title and the Golden Boot as the league's scoring champion all in the same year, another hat-trick of sorts that Messi achieved in 2025.