Lionel Messi and a 2024 with a busy agenda: the eight titles he will seek between the Argentine national team and Inter Miami to expand his myth

After toasting with his family in Rosario, Lionel Messi He will begin a year that will bring him intense activity both with the Argentine team and with InterMiami. If your body accompanies you, Leo is guaranteed participation in five tournaments; If the planets aligned, I could do up to eight raceswith the possibility of continuing to add titles to the 43 accumulated in his professional career.

Even after entering Qatar A world elusive to the Argentine national team for 36 years, the national team continues to be a priority for the Rosario player. This year, the group led by Lionel Scaloni will face the difficult mission of defending the crown of America’s Cup which he achieved in Brazil in 2021. He will be in the tournament that will take place from June 20 to July 14 in the United States.

The 48th edition of the competition will include those selected from the 10 federations affiliated with the South American Football Confederation (Conmebol) and six of the North American, Central American and Caribbean Football Confederation (Concacaf). Argentina will share Group A with Peru, Chile and the winner of the playoffs between Canada and Trinidad and Tobago in March. This will be Messi’s seventh participation in a Copa América.

Just 10 days after the Cup final, the United States soccer tournament will begin to take place. Paris Olympic Games. While the age limit to join the men’s teams is 23, each team can include up to three seniors. The dream of many is that, if Argentina gives a gift in that event, one of them will be Messi. The Under 23 coach announced it, Javier Mascherano. “Leo has the doors of the national team open to do what he wants. If, in case we qualify, he wants to go, he will be welcome. I would like”he said in late October.

So much so that Rosario can even consider the possibility of participating in an Olympic event for the second time (he was champion in Beijing 2008), Argentina will have to qualify first. Mascherano’s team will win one of the two tickets that will be assigned for the South American Olympic Qualifiers to be played in Venezuela from January 20th to February 11th: will share group B with Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay and Peru.

There is a possibility in the air that these competitions will put an end to the captain’s experience in the national team. In any case, his final words on the matter left the door open for continuity until the 2026 World Cup. “It’s not about being there just to be there, but about feeling good and being able to contribute to the group. Knowing how old I will be then (39), it seems difficult, but we will see how I feel physically.”he explained in an interview published by France Football in November.

Long before focusing on the selected one, Messi will have plenty of action with his team, with whom he will play his first full season. After the preseason, which will include a tour of Asia (will play two matches in Riyadh, one in Hong Kong and one in Tokyo) e a friendly match with Newell’s in Fort Lauderdale, Inter Miami will debut in Major League Soccer on Wednesday 21 February against Royal Salt Lake at the DRV PNK stage. It will be the first of 34 matches in the regular phase, which ends on October 19th. The playoffs will begin the following week and end on December 7th.

The other local tournament the Florida team will participate in this year will be the Lamar Hunt US Cup. In this cup, in the 2023 edition of which the Herons they reached the final (they fell to Houston Dynamo), 100 professional and amateur teams from the United States participate. Inter Miami, like most of the MLS, will participate in the third round, which will be played between April 16th and 17th. The final is scheduled for September 25th.

The franchise to which it belongs David Beckham and the brothers Jorge and José Mas Santos It will also have international activity. One of his challenges will be to defend the title League Cup which he achieved in 2023 (beating Nashville SC in the final). That tournament, involving 29 MLS teams and 18 Mexican Liga MX teams, will take place between July 26 and Aug. 25, so it will partially overlap with the Olympic Games.

Before this task, Inter Miami will present in the first edition of Concacaf Champions Cup, which will be an expanded version of that confederation’s old Champions League. For having won the Leagues Cup, the pink team has entered this direct elimination tournament (all groups will be home and away, except the final) in which 27 teams from 10 countries will compete.

Even though the European Cup will begin in the second week of February, with the first round duels, Inter Miami will only reach the round of 16: will face the winner of the match between Nashville SC and Moca FC of the Dominican Republic. The first leg (away) and the return leg (in Fort Lauderdale) will be played on March 7 and 13.

This regional competition, whose final is scheduled for June 2, could give Messi’s team, if they become champions, a ticket to the new FIFA Intercontinental Cup, in which the champions of the top club competitions of the six confederations will face each other at the end of the year. Winning the Concacaf Champions League it would also guarantee him a place in the 2025 edition of Club World Cupwhich will now last four years and will bring together 32 participants.

As if this were not enough, Conmebol and Concacaf are working, starting from the signing of a strategic collaboration agreement in January, on the creation of a new quadrangular tournament that would bring together the winners of the main club competitions of both confederations.

If this reconfiguration of the old Interamerican Cup If released in 2024, Inter Miami, winners of the 2023 League Cup, would be guaranteed participation alongside León de México (winner of the Concacaf Champions League), Fluminense (champion of the Copa Libertadores) and Liga Deportiva Universitaria Quito (monarch of the Cup South American).