Lionel Messi to Inter Miami: could Barcelona star join David Beckham’s MLS club?

According to The Sunday Times, Barcelona star Lionel Messi is being lined up by David Beckham for a “sensational” move to his new Major League Soccer (MLS) side Inter Miami.

Former Manchester United and England captain Beckham is the owner of the Miami franchise that will join the MLS in the 2020 season and he wants Argentine ace Messi to be the team’s star name.

The Sunday Times’s football correspondent Jonathan Northcroft reports that Beckham’s US club will look for “world-renowned talent to launch the franchise with a splash”.

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“No signing would be bigger than Messi,” Northcroft writes. By 2020 the Barcelona star will be entering the final year of his current deal at the Camp Nou.

Oliver Holt in the Mail on Sunday says that no contact has been made between the two parties. But an Inter Miami source admits that Messi would be “the obvious big-name signing if he could be tempted away”.

Beckham has two years to “work his magic with the Barcelona man”, says Give Me Sport. Miami have also been linked with Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Radamel Falcao and James Milner.

Inter Miami – who are officially called Club Internacional de Futbol Miami – have yet to find a home ground. The Sunday Times says that in November Miami residents will be “invited to vote on whether to allow the city to negotiate an agreement to develop Miami Freedom Park”.