Does Lionel Messi Speak English? Inter Miami Star Sticks to Spanish in NBC Interview with Tom Llamas

Fort Lauderdale—When Lionel Messi sat down with NBC’s Tom Llamas for a season-ending interview, the conversation unfolded exactly as it has since the Argentine arrived in South Florida: questions first delivered in English for the network’s audience, then seamlessly switched to Spanish for the world’s most scrutinized athlete. The 90-second exchange, broadcast after Inter Miami’s final 2025 regular-season match, offered no on-air evidence of Messi using English, reinforcing the pattern he has followed since signing with MLS in the summer of 2023.

Inside the league, however, teammates insist the captain’s English is no longer confined to private tutoring sessions. Full-back Julian Gressel recalled the moment he first heard Messi speak English during a match: “He came over and said, ‘Now we change, you stay and Jordi runs in behind.’ Then he grinned and asked, ‘English pretty good, no?’” Gressel laughed on the debut episode of his 2024 podcast, Player/Manager. “I told him it was perfect.”

That locker-room anecdote aligns with Messi’s own admission of progress. In a February 2026 appearance on the Argentine program Miro de Atras, the forward lamented not studying the language earlier. “I had the time to study at least English and I didn’t do it, and I regret it a lot,” he told hosts Gonzalo Iglesias and Nahuel Guzman. “You find yourself next to amazing personalities and feel kind of ignorant.”

Publicly, the Rosario native remains protective of his Spanish diction, mindful that every syllable carries global weight. Since 2020 he has taken formal English lessons, and during his Paris Saint-Germain stint club staff noticed an uptick in comprehension. Still, when NBC’s cameras rolled, Messi chose the linguistic comfort zone that carried him to eight Ballon d’Or titles.

Contractually, the 38-year-old is locked into Miami through the 2027 season after signing a two-year extension in October 2025. Whether the extension yields more English-language sound bites remains uncertain; for now, the superstar’s clearest statements continue to arrive en español, leaving translation duties to network anchors—and the occasional teammate.

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