By Conor O’Neill / The Athletic
Inter Miami’s second-leg trip last week to face the Kingston-based Cavalier FC in the CONCACAF Champions Cup took Lionel Messi into uncharted territory: He had never played in Jamaica before.
Across 1,086 club and international matches in 48 countries and 179 cities, Messi had scored 852 goals. Yet this game was the first Caribbean stamp on his soccer-playing passport.
For a player who struggled with intense homesickness after leaving Rosario, Argentina, for Barcelona at 13, Messi has since enjoyed a career that has taken him across six continents. Before Miami’s match against Cavalier, Messi had played 873 matches in Europe, 114 in South America, 63 in North America, 29 in Asia, five in Africa and two in Oceania.
Completing the continental set with a match in Antarctica would be logistically challenging — though last month’s trip to Kansas City, played in 16-degree weather, was a suitable proxy for the ice-capped, largely uninhabited landmass.
From Melbourne, Australia, to Montreal, Messi has dazzled crowds across the globe, but his international travels got off to a shaky start. His first senior match outside Spain ended in a 2-0 loss to Shakhtar Donetsk, in Ukraine, in December 2004.
Eight months later, he ventured beyond Barcelona again for his Argentina debut, an international friendly against Hungary in Budapest, only to be sent off after just two minutes for an apparent elbow, a decision that left the distraught 18-year-old in tears.
Inevitably, things picked up.
Messi’s globe-trotting career truly took off in 2006. He scored his first goal outside Spain in an international friendly against Croatia in Basel, Switzerland. That summer, he opened his World Cup account in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, and just a few months later, he netted his first away European club goal in a Champions League clash in Germany against Werder Bremen, a 1-1 draw that was just the beginning of his dominance on the continent’s biggest stage.
Unsurprisingly, Europe has been the playground for much of Messi’s success, with 778 appearances for Barcelona and 75 for Paris Saint-Germain. Over his time with both clubs, he scored 704 club goals in 21 countries and amassed 591 club wins, a dominance that delivered 12 domestic league titles.
Yet the crowning glory of Messi’s European club career lies in his four Champions League titles. These triumphs have come in countries where his win rate, by his own lofty standards, is relatively modest.
Aside from his first title, secured in his absence through injury in Paris against Arsenal in 2006, each of his other Champions League victories was won in a country where he has prevailed in fewer than half his matches.
Take Italy, where he has won just five of 15 matches — only three against Italian club sides. The other two victories sit at opposite ends of the significance scale: one, a Champions League final master class in 2009, in which his header sealed Barcelona’s 2-0 win over Manchester United in Rome; the other, a far more forgettable 2-0 international friendly win over Angola in Salerno.
England, too, holds mixed memories for Messi. He lifted another Champions League title there in 2011, scoring in Barcelona’s 3-1 victory over Manchester United at Wembley — one of nine goals he has scored on English soil.
Yet for all his successes, a night in Liverpool in 2019 may have marked the nadir of his club career. After winning the first leg 3-0, Barcelona collapsed in its return fixture, suffering a 4-0 defeat at Anfield that remains one of the most stunning turnarounds in Champions League history.
Messi’s final Champions League triumph came in Berlin, where Barcelona defeated Juventus 3-1 in the 2015 final. Over his career, he has played in nine German cities — Gelsenkirchen, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Munich, Bremen, Stuttgart, Leverkusen, Berlin and Dortmund. Despite his extensive travels in Germany, he has never won an away match against Bayern Munich. Bayern also handed him the heaviest defeat of his career, a humiliating 8-2 loss in Lisbon, as the 2019-20 Champions League was relocated because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite his storied and dizzyingly successful European club career, Messi’s greatest hour came in the blue and white of Argentina, when, in December 2022, he finally lifted the World Cup, triumphing over France in a dramatic penalty shootout in Lusail, Qatar.
Argentina has long recognized Messi’s value, and it charges accordingly. The going rate for a friendly featuring its captain is believed to be $5 million, a price that has taken him to myriad spots. Over the years, Messi has played international friendlies in Australia, Bangladesh, China, England, France, Germany, Guatemala, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Norway, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.
Messi has had no trouble adapting to the United States: His MLS career has been a roaring success so far. He is back to scoring almost a goal a game again, and his Inter Miami career has included games in 17 cities across the United States, Canada and Mexico.
He did not start Miami’s match in Jamaica, but he subbed into the game in the 53rd minute, to a thunderous ovation. On one of the final touches of the game, he scored off a through ball from Santiago Morales. The clinical finish sent the entire stadium into roars, with chants of “Messi! Messi!” filling the air.
After the final whistle blew, Messi was mobbed by opposing players. Only one asked him for his shirt; the rest just wanted a selfie.
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