Lionel Messi returns to LA for showdown with Sonny

LOS ANGELES — When Lionel Messi last stepped onto a pitch in this city, the moment carried the weight of a comet blazing across the California night: rare, incandescent, gone too soon. On Saturday, that comet returns. MLS Opening Night at BMO Stadium will host the league’s reigning champion, Los Angeles Football Club, against Inter Miami CF in a fixture that feels less like a calendar date and more like a global summit.

The match, broadcast on Apple TV’s Walmart Saturday Showdown at 9:30 p.m. ET, marks Messi’s only scheduled appearance in Los Angeles this season. Since his 2023 arrival in Miami, the Argentine has re-engineered an entire franchise, transforming Inter Miami from afterthought to empire: a Supporters’ Shield, a Leagues Cup, and the 2025 MLS Cup now reside in South Florida. Packed houses in every North American ZIP code have followed, and the club’s valuation has rocketed upward. The soon-to-open Miami Freedom Park, a billion-dollar cathedral of ambition, might as well bear a plaque reading, “This stadium is brought to you by Messi.”

Yet at 38, Messi refuses to coast on mythology. He presses, he hunts, and he still manufactures endings. In the 2025 MLS Cup Final, with the match balanced on a knife edge, it was Messi who triggered the high press that turned Vancouver over and unlocked victory. Trophies endure; the memory of his urgency lingers longer.

Across the field stands Son Heung-min, LAFC’s Korean superstar and the most electrifying addition MLS has welcomed since Messi himself. The two global icons will share an MLS touchline for the first time, a continental collision under the LA lights. Son joked last December that he “let Messi win this year, but next year … we’ll be at the top.” Jokes are jokes—until they become prophecy.

LAFC believes its roster is engineered to confront Miami’s star power without awe. On Saturday night, under the Coliseum’s historic peristyle, the league will discover whether that belief is steel or mere bravado.

Still, the evening tilts toward Messi. Los Angeles is a city fluent in greatness: the Dodgers own back-to-back World Series crowns; the Lakers hang championship banners like drying laundry. The city knows how to calibrate legend against reality, and Messi—more often than not—exceeds both.

This is the lone opportunity in 2026 to witness the sport’s most decorated artist operate live in Los Angeles, not through a screen or curated highlight reel, but in the breathing present. Fans will arrive seeking more than a result; they will come for the hush before a free kick, the collective inhale, the impossible angle that bends into inevitability. One night. One chance. One more chance for Los Angeles to feel that familiar electricity.