Messi has scored 11 goals in nine games since joining Miami last month
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Lionel Messi and son Thiago Messi. Photo: Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty
Look out Miami, there’s a new Messi in town.
A little more than a month after Lionel Messi joined Inter Miami and helped lead the team to its first cup championship, the Argentinian soccer star’s 10-year-old son Thiago Messi has joined the team’s under-12 squad.
CBS Sports reports that Messi’s son is on Inter Miami’s under-12 team roster, joining 150 other youth players who play for the Major League Soccer team’s youth academy.
The outlet reports that David Beckham’s son Romeo and former head coach Phil Neville’s son Harvey have also come up through the ranks of Inter Miami’s youth squad.
Messi has three children with wife Antonella Roccuzzo: Thiago, 10, Mateo, 7, and Ciro, 5.
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Thiago Messi and father Lionel Messi. JUAN MABROMATA/AFP via Getty
Messi made his debut with Inter Miami on July 21 after announcing the month prior that he was coming to the United States.
“After winning the World Cup and not being able to return to Barcelona, it was my turn to go to the league of the United States to live football in another way and to enjoy the day to day more,” Messi said in June. “Obviously, with the same responsibility and desire to play well and do things well as always. But in a calmer way.”
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While Messi has appeared calm as can be on the pitch, nothing else has around him.
Ticket prices and attendance have skyrocketed, while the once last-place Inter Miami squad has seen one of the most dramatic turnarounds in league history.
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Lionel Messi and son Thiago Messi. Quality Sport Images/Getty
Miami is undefeated since Messi joined the team, and he’s scored or assisted in every match since making his debut. Messi helped Miami win the Leagues Cup Championship earlier this month and helped lead the team to next month’s US Open Cup final.
In total, Messi has scored 11 goals in nine games with Miami — and many of them have been highlight-reel plays.
“OUT OF THIS WORLD,” the MLS tweeted alongside a clip of Messi’s first official league goal.
“Messi is the biggest arrival in American sports history,” ESPN columnist Luis Miguel Echegaray wrote last week. “And when it’s all said and done, he will have been (along with Michael Jordan) the biggest star to have ever played here.”
