The real reason Hong Kong is so mad at Lionel Messi

Soccer fans in Hong Kong continued stewing this week over Argentine superstar Lionel Messi's failure to take the field in an exhibition match his Major League Soccer team, Inter Miami, played last week against a local team. More than 38,000 fans packed the stadium, paying as much as $624 a seat, for a glimpse of the global sports icon's skills, but they spent the game angrily watching him sit on the bench, said the Financial Times. Then Messi declined to present a trophy at a post-match ceremony, deepening the injury to local pride.

Fans booed team co-owner David Beckham after the match. Messi apologized, saying he "regretted" that he had to skip the game due to a "swollen and painful" groin injury, BBC reported. "I hope that one day we will have the opportunity to come back and give our best to our fans and friends in Hong Kong," he said. But that didn't soothe the hurt feelings. In fact, the controversy grew this week into something of a diplomatic incident.

Why couldn't Hong Kong just let it go?

Initially, fans and officials in the semi-autonomous Chinese financial hub simply felt they had been cheated. Some spectators said they should get a refund, and their rage intensified when Tatler Asia, the promoter of the match against a local team, initially refused, saying it had only promised Messi would appear if he wasn't injured. Hong Kong's government, which put up $2 million for the match, demanded an explanation after Messi took the field in another exhibition game in Japan three days later, ESPN said. Hong Kong lawmaker Regina Ip called it a "deliberate and calculated snub," according to BBC. "Messi should never be allowed to return to Hong Kong," she said. "His lies and hypocrisy are disgusting." 

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The early debate focused on whether the team was wrong to bench Messi, or to have scheduled the game at all. This "international scandal" is "as hilarious as it was predictable," said Greg Cote in The Miami Herald. Most MLS teams play one pre-season friendly, but Inter Miami put its players through a "grueling" series of seven games with stops in Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong and Japan less than two weeks before the season starts. The team only has Messi signed through 2025, so you can hardly fault it for "milking his name for maximum profit" while it can. But its real focus should be "getting its superstar healthy and rested for the MLS season, not parading him out like a show pony to make Hong Kong happy." Cliff Buddle at The South China Morning Post agreed, saying: "He is not an entertainer or a diplomat. His job is to play football — when fit."

Did the apologies and excuses work?

Hardly. The uproar intensified and Tatler Asia caved at the end of last week, saying it would refund half the ticket price and take a $5 million loss on the event. But that didn't defuse the controversy. The Hong Kong government clawed back its financial support, said The Athletic. Then China jumped to Hong Kong's defense. Beijing canceled two scheduled exhibition matches against Argentina's national team that had been scheduled for March, broadening the dispute from Hong Kong vs. Inter Miami and its star to all of China against Messi and his entire home country. "Mainland-Hong Kong relations have been terribly rocky recently," said Alex Lo in The South China Morning Post. "Here's a chance to prove they have our back. Argentina is a cost-free target."

China took the incident as an attempt to damage Hong Kong's reputation. It's possible the star and his team had "political motives, as Hong Kong intends to boost its economy through the event and external forces deliberately wanted to embarrass Hong Kong through this incident," said China's Global Times in an editorial. After Messi miraculously recovered in time to play in Japan, this "cannot be ruled out." The Inter Miami game came at a critical time for the Hong Kong government, Sam Goodman, a senior policy director at the China Strategic Risks Institute and an advisor to Hong Kong Watch, said to The Athletic. The city is trying to rehabilitate its image after "three years of pretty draconian crackdown on basic rights," and the game came at a particularly sensitive moment because details on another proposed security law were released a couple of days before Inter Miami arrived, he said. "That's the backdrop for this game. A lot of human rights organizations were quite upset that Inter Miami went."

Do Hong Kong and China have any real beef with Argentina?

It looks that way. Somebody in China, whether it's fans or bots deployed by hackers, is attacking Argentina over things that have nothing to do with Messi, soccer or even Hong Kong. Commenters on a post by the Argentinian Embassy on Weibo, China's equivalent of X, mocked Argentina's claim to the Falkland Islands, the British overseas territory off South America's southern coast Argentina tried to take over in a 1982 war. "The Falkland Islands are an integral and inseparable part of the United Kingdom," one user wrote, according to Goal. 

The ongoing outrage over Messi's absence on the field "cannot be disentangled from the Chinese leaders' profound loathing of the recent political developments in Argentina," said Miles Yu in The Washington Times. "Argentina's shift from a long-standing alignment with left-wing political forces toward the free-market stance championed by the newly elected president, Javier Milei, has been a source of contention for the Chinese government." Milei's rejection of socialism and Argentina's joining of the BRICS pact China hopes will counter Western economic dominance "represents a direct challenge to China‘s influence." Messi is "a global icon of Argentine identity" so he has "become an unwitting participant in this ideological battle."