The Inter Miami star Messi is MLS’ first back-to-back MVP winner

Bangla Press Desk:   Best player. Best team. Inter Miami’s Lionel Messi is the unquestioned force in Major League Soccer right now, on a run like nobody else the league has ever seen.

The 38-year-old Argentine star — and captain of the MLS Cup champions — has become the first back-to-back MVP in MLS history, getting announced Tuesday as this year’s winner of the league’s top individual honor.

Messi — thanking his teammates and saying he couldn’t have won the award without them — accepted the trophy at the opening ceremony of his Messi Cup youth tournament, which kicked off Tuesday. That’s why the award announcement was delayed until after the season; Messi wanted kids to be part of it.

“He’s a unicorn, man — not just for what he does on the field,” MLS Commissioner Don Garber said Tuesday after the on-field ceremony in misty conditions. “He’s just a special man.”

Messi becomes the sixth player in MLS history to win MVP and a championship in the same season. Of the previous five, only Atlanta United’s Josef Martinez in 2018 won MVP, a title and the Golden Boot as the league’s scoring champion all in the same year, another hat trick of sorts that Messi achieved in 2025.

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