{"id":62243,"date":"2026-10-07T13:28:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T13:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/lionel-messi-last-match-argentina-legend-has-big-plans-for-the-future-as-golden-era-ends\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T13:28:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T13:28:11","slug":"lionel-messi-last-match-argentina-legend-has-big-plans-for-the-future-as-golden-era-ends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/lionel-messi-last-match-argentina-legend-has-big-plans-for-the-future-as-golden-era-ends\/","title":{"rendered":"Lionel Messi last match: Argentina legend has big plans for the future as golden era ends"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Newell&#8217;s will still be close, because the club is one of the sixteen academies at this year&#8217;s Messi Cup.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">If owning clubs is one love, youth football is the other, and his regular presence at his son&#8217;s games and the Messi Cup are the proof. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He puts his money and his time into a tournament for Under-16 academies, which began in 2025 with eight teams.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Last year, the organisers expected him to come to one or two games, perhaps only the final, but to everyone&#8217;s surprise, he sat through every match on every day.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This year the teams doubled to 16, from 25 October at Inter Miami&#8217;s facilities in Florida, including Atletico Madrid, Chelsea, Barcelona, Inter Milan, Arsenal, UE Cornella, and others.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Away from the pitch, Messi has built a portfolio that helps explain why <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/hanktucker\/2026\/06\/05\/how-lionel-messi-became-a-billionaire\/\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">Forbes put his net worth at about $1.1bn<span class=\"visually-hidden ssrcss-i2z2ig-VisuallyHidden e16en2lz0\">, <!-- -->external<\/span><\/a> in June, with earnings of around $140m over the previous year split between football and business.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">His best known endorsement is the lifetime Adidas deal he signed in 2017. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The most visible piece is MiM Hotels, six boutique properties from Ibiza to Andorra, which Melia has run under a rental agreement since 1 November 2025. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">MiM takes its name from Messi and the Majestic hotel group, and runs the hotels inside its Melia Collection.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In Rosario, his family firm invests in Carrasco M, a development of 24 homes by the Parana river, with \u00c1ngel Di Mar\u00eda&#8217;s property agency handling the sales.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He is also a partner in the restaurant chain El Club de la Milanesa which plans to open five branches in Catalonia, the first in Castelldefels. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He has a mate collection with the drinkware giants Stanley, the brand&#8217;s first multi-year deal with an athlete, and he gave his opinion on materials and colours.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The business side began with his father. Jorge Messi, who died in August aged 68, looked after his son&#8217;s affairs from the start, and some of his early advice led the family into trouble with the tax authorities in Spain. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The company then grew into branches for TV production, marketing, media and commercial partnerships, among others, all well established by the time Jorge fell seriously ill.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Messi trusts the people who run them, some of them with him since his early days at Barcelona, and a thorough filter means he only gets offered and chooses what he is comfortable with. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He sets his own relationship with the business world, and nobody imposes anything on him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In Miami last November, Messi told the America Business Forum: &#8220;Business is something that interests me. I would like to keep learning because I know nothing and I am just starting out.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The portfolio his circle has prepared is already impressive while he finds more football targets to keep the flame alive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/football\/articles\/cwly3lpmyye9o?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Newell&#8217;s will still be close, because the club is one of the sixteen academies at this year&#8217;s Messi Cup. If owning clubs is one love, youth football is the other, and his regular presence at his son&#8217;s games and the Messi Cup are the proof. He puts his money and his time into a tournament [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latin-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62245,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62243\/revisions\/62245"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}