Lionel Messi went to watch some soccer on Friday. He didn’t say a word about his own future.<\/p>\n
The Inter Miami star, who is closing in on a contract extension that will keep him with his Major League Soccer club through at least the 2026 season and likely beyond, showed up to watch the global finals of the 1v1 soccer tournament that he helped create and is sponsored by a hydration drink that he co-founded.<\/p>\n
His appearance came days after he and Inter Miami closed in on an extension, one that the sides have been working on for months and would assure him of being with the club when it plans to open its new stadium near Miami International Airport next year.<\/p>\n
Messi watched both the men\u2019s and women\u2019s semifinals and then the finals of his event. He greeted the winners on stage and signed autographs for fans, even taking a large group selfie with the entire crowd at the end.<\/p>\n
But there were no hints about the contract \u2014 he did not address reporters \u2014 and no news was coming from his team on Friday, either.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope it happens soon, because I think it\u2019s great news not only for the club but for MLS in general, right?\u201d Inter Miami coach Javier Mascherano said earlier Friday at the team’s training base in Fort Lauderdale, when asked about the extension.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s just for the team,\u201d Mascherano said. \u201cObviously, for the team, for the club, for the history of this club, it\u2019s something unique. But I think for soccer in general in the United States, it would be very, very important news. They could have the best player who has ever played this sport here for a while longer.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lionel Messi went to watch some soccer on Friday. He didn’t say a word about his own future. The Inter Miami star, who is closing in on a contract extension that will keep him with his Major League Soccer club through at least the 2026 season and likely beyond, showed up to watch the global …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54575,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54574"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54576,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54574\/revisions\/54576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}