Lionel Messi greets the future stars of Inter Miami as the Ballon d’Or winner proudly displays his most recent honor to young academy students before posing for pictures.

 

 

Inter Miami superstar Lionel Messi brought his latest Ballon d’Or award back to the team faculty and showed it off to the players in the youth academy on Thursday.

Miami’s academy posted a video showing clips of Messi interacting with youngsters while posing for group pictures with the team and the trophy.

The 36-year-old recently won his eighth Ballon d’Or prize after edging out the likes of Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe.

The video posted on X showed him carrying a large case containing the trophy into one of the buildings at Miami’s practice complex before being greeted by the awaiting youth players.

Messi then took the time to exchange handshakes and hugs with one group of players before taking a group photo and then repeating the process with a younger team.

‘The game is about trophies, and Messi’s performance in Qatar sealed first place and six points from this judge. Messi was on a mission out there, absolutely driven with the obsession of winning the World Cup. Messi’s career, even one as glittering as his, with four Champions Leagues, needed this nirvana in Qatar’.

It had been well documented throughout Messi’s career, prior to the tournament last December, that the only major trophy to elude him was the World Cup.

For a long time, Messi had never won anything with his national side but he put that to bed after winning the Copa America in 2021 before the World Cup a year later.

‘By any metric, Messi was the most effective combatant in the most important competition in sport,’ Winter continued. ‘But Messi is about so much more than numbers. He is about the poetry.

‘He is about that astonishing explosion of pace to whisk the ball away from a defender as good as Croatia’s Josko Gvardiol in the semi-final on December 13 at Lusail Stadium’.

Come the end of the tournament, Messi was the competition’s second top scorer, had the joint-most assists and the most chances created.

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Paul Merson says 23-year-old Liverpool star has become his new favourite Premier League player

Paul Merson has insisted that Liverpool midfielder Dominik Szoboszlai is his new favourite Premier League player.

Szoboszlai has hit the ground running since arriving at Anfield this summer. Having joined from RB Leipzig, the 23-year-old has looked liked he’s been playing for Liverpool all his life.

This is something Merson acknowledges in his Premier League predictions for Sportskeeda this week. Predicting a 3-0 win for the Reds over Luton Town on Sunday, the pundit highlights Szoboszlai as one to watch.

“Dominik Szoboszlai, on the other hand, has been my favourite player in the Premier League this season – he’s been absolutely outstanding!” raved the former England midfielder.

“He’s come into a brand new league for a huge fee and settled in quicker than snow, that is some achievement.”

Merson raves about Szoboszlai

‘Settled quicker than snow’ – we like that from Merson, we might pinch that. It nicely illustrates how well Szoboszlai has adapted to life at Liverpool.

Perhaps it can sometimes be overstated just how big a jump playing in the Premier League can be for players.

It may be slightly faster and more intense than other leagues around the world, but top level football is top level football to some extent.

Good players will always be able to transfer their skills from one division to the next.

That’s perhaps the key thing here, though. How many players do you see come and light things up having never featured in England before?

Although the list probably isn’t all that short, it is generally limited to the top, top players.

Szobo’s mate at Manchester City – Erling Haaland – did it, and from a Liverpool point of view the likes of Mohamed Salah and Fernando Torres spring to mind.

But these are truly world-class, top of the range stars we’re talking about. For Szoboszlai to truly add his name to that list he’s going to have to keep proving himself for far longer than he has so far.

Given what we’ve seen of the Hungarian since August though, we’d be fools not to back him to do that and more.