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# TIME Athlete of the Year 2023 | Lionel Messi

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<!-- video src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/fUP52zKT.m3u8" -->
## Video: TIME Athlete of the Year 2023 | Lionel Messi

[Watch (HLS stream): TIME Athlete of the Year 2023 | Lionel Messi](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/fUP52zKT.m3u8) (4:08)

![TIME Athlete of the Year 2023 | Lionel Messi](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/fUP52zKT/poster.jpg?width=720)

_Published 2023-12-05. TIME Athlete of the Year 2023 | Lionel Messi_


---

Dec 12, 2023 6:46 PM UTC

---

## More From This Series

[All Videos](https://time.com/video/)

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### Lionel Messi's Messy Tax Situation

[Lionel Messi Photo Shoot](/video/xdptIU9F/)

### Lionel Messi Photo Shoot

---


## Transcript

Leo Messi is X athlete of the year over several excellent candidates. The reason Messi stands out is because of the football fever that he brought to the United States and really to the world throughout the year Messi Ted better statistical years in 2023. But starting late last year, he won his first ever World Cup sure. We cannot stop talking about the World Cup final it lived up to the hype and then some of crowning achievement of Lionel Messi's singular career and since that time everything he has just been incrementally more important and more relevant to sports fans around the world. So let's just talk about his on-field ability.

He's like 5657. He's he's not a huge guy but that hasn't stopped him at all his left foot his magical. He'll see passing angles that nobody else sees you'll know where the ball is going before anybody else does and he kind of approaches the game like the game of chess always moving and thinking and he's a selfish player throughout his career. He set the standard of Excellence on the field and that's pretty influential. There's a lot of kids around the world that play soccer many of them. Most of them are trying to play like Messi Messi is the standard breaking news Lionel Messi set to leave PSG at the end of the current season after his contract ran out in Paris Saint-Germain.

There was all this talk about where Lionel Messi with play would he stay in Paris? Would he go to Barcelona the club that signed him when he was just a thirteen-year-old boy, would he take more than a billion dollars? Quarterly from a team in Saudi Arabia and kind of defied a lot of Expectations by signing with inter Miami which at the time was a last-place club in Major League Soccer, but more relevantly isn't thought of by world soccer fans as one of the top leagues in the world. It's a new era for American soccer. The impact was he's changed forever the trajectory of soccer in America, which is just one country in the world, but also happens to be the biggest commercial Sports Market on the planet Earth game sold out in minutes at most expensive major league soccer game ever and Messi came here and the way he came here.

He just captivated soccer fans and not soccer fans alike. He scored 10 goals in his first seven games and Inter Miami scoring in the final of the League's cup, which helped put the game at the penalty kicks and give it to Miami. Championship. Open is Messi's nice you so big that the media partner of MLS Apple decided we're going to give him a cut of every additional subscription we get to our service because he's here the day before Messi played. His first game in Miami. Apple signed about 6,000 new subscribers The Day of His debut over a hundred thousand people signed up for Apple TV Plus. Can you just see it legal messy?

He comes to New York everybody as Messengers in Miami. Everybody wants to be around him. Chakras grown here. It's become more popular European League games are broadcast hear kids talk about their favorite players overseas. So that's not to say that soccer the US has it been on the upswing but the growth is going to be accelerated. Now the interest is going to be accelerating now all because of one person

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