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. Messi apologized, saying he "regretted" that he had to skip the game due to a "swollen and painful" groin injury, BBC said.Â
Why couldn't Hong Kong just let it go? Initially, fans and officials in the semi-autonomous Chinese financial hub felt they had been cheated. Hong Kong's government 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," said BBC.Â
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. You can hardly fault the team 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."Â
Did the apologies and excuses work? Hardly. Match promoter Tatler Asia said it would refund half the ticket price and take a $5 million loss, but the Hong Kong government still clawed back its financial support, said The Athletic. Then Beijing canceled two scheduled exhibition matches against Argentina's national team, broadening the dispute from Hong Kong versus Inter Miami and its star to all of China against Messi and his home country.Â
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 adviser to Hong Kong Watch, said to The Athletic. The city is trying to rehabilitate its image after "three years of a 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.Â
Do Hong Kong and China have any real beef with Argentina? It looks that way. "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," said Miles Yu in The Washington Times. Milei's rejection of socialism and Argentina's joining of the BRICS pact 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." |