Lionel Messi Contract Extension Highlights Flaws in MLS Salary Structure

Lionel Messi scored two more goals on Wednesday night to bring his Major League Soccer-leading total to 24.

His Inter Miami side have now won three in a row following their 4-0 romp at New York City FC. And the Herons still have two games in hand on East leaders Philadelphia and others as they attempt to come from behind to win a second MLS Supporters’ Shield.

Amid that winning streak, both ESPN and the Miami Herald reported last week that Messi and Miami have agreed to terms on a contract extension that will see the world’s greatest living player finish his career in South Florida. While not yet official, that was obviously welcome news at MLS headquarters and in South Florida.

For the rest of us, it’s beginning to feel a little boring.

Messi is still an elite player in global terms at age 38. Yes, the pedestrian level of MLS flatters his abilities at this advanced age. But this is still the man who led CONMEBOL in 2026 World Cup Qualifying goal-scoring, and helped propel Argentina to a 2024 Copa America crown (even though he was injured in the final).

However, if you've been watching much of Messi and Miami as currently constructed, it's hard to deny their games just aren’t very compelling.

More often than not, Miami overwhelms its opponents with the skill of Messi and veteran co-stars Luis Suarez, Rodrigo de Paul, Jordi Alba and Sergio Busquets. The result is typically a comfortable win.

Yet when they do suffer the occasional defeat, those games aren’t particularly close either. Of Miami’s eight losses in all competitions this season, seven have been by three or more goals.

There’s a few ways to explain this, but the simplest is this: Miami is so talented that when they dictate the terms of the game, opponents don't have a chance. But if an opponent can manage to dictate the terms, Miami is also so old and unathletic that they can fall apart very, very fast.

At its root, this is an MLS roster rules problem, a system that allows its teams to hypothetically spend an unlimited amount of money on its squad, but only in a limited number of positions. Miami is the product of those rules taken to their absolute extreme. According to numbers from Capology.com, nearly three quarters of Miami’s payroll goes to just three players: Messi, Alba and Busquets. (Technically, Atletico Madrid is still paying most of Rodrigo de Paul's salary on a loan-to-buy agreement).

With Messi’s future now secure, this is the time for MLS to get a lot braver and eliminate those restrictions. That doesn’t have to mean abolishing a salary structure completely. But it should mean introducing a system that frees teams to choose the balance of how they’d like to allocate their resources across the entire roster.

That would allow Miami and other ambitious teams to build more complete squads. Just as importantly, it would permit lesser spending squads to put more resources into the defensive positions when they don’t have the money that the top MLS-level attackers command.

It will have to happen eventually if MLS is really going to grow into what it wants to be.

But there's never been a better reason to push the cause forward than Messi's extension. Because if they don't, you’re going to get a lot more of the world's greatest living player competing in some of MLS' least compelling matches.