Lionel Messi has finalised his deal to join Major League Soccer, and after years of planning and pursuing, Inter Miami has landed a global icon.

Messi’s contract became official Saturday, a little more than five weeks after he declared that he would be coming to Inter Miami. The team will introduce him Sunday night at its stadium in Fort Lauderdale, and the first home match of the Messi era could be as early as Friday in a Leagues Cup match against Cruz Azul.

A formal news conference is scheduled for Monday, and his first training session with his new club is expected on Tuesday. The club previously announced that Messi’s deal will be for 2 1/2 seasons and will pay him between $50 million and $60 million annually — putting the total contract value between $125 million and $150 million in cash alone.

“BIENVENIDO 10,” the team posted Saturday on Twitter.

Welcome, Messi, indeed.

“We are overjoyed that the greatest player in the world chose Inter Miami CF and Major League Soccer, and his decision is a testament to the momentum and energy behind our League and our sport in North America,” MLS Commissioner Don Garber said in a statement. “We have no doubt that Lionel will show the world that MLS can be a League of Choice for the best players in the game.”

It is, in many ways, an unusual marriage. Messi — still perhaps the biggest star in the game — is signing with a team that entered Saturday in last place in the MLS’s Eastern Conference standings. It’s a club in just its fourth season that plays in a temporary home that will seat only about 22,000 people when some rushed renovations like adding extra bleacher seats get completed.

Doesn’t matter. Soccer royalty now plays for Inter Miami.

Messi arrived in South Florida on Tuesday following vacation, then started the process of physicals and paperwork on Wednesday and the deal got finalized Saturday afternoon. The seven-time Ballon d’Or winner — the trophy given annually to the world’s best player — is making his Miami move after two years with Paris Saint-Germain.

“I’m very excited to start this next step in my career with Inter Miami and in the United States,” Messi said in a statement. “This is a fantastic opportunity and together we will continue to build this beautiful project. The idea is to work together to achieve the objectives we set, and I’m very eager to start helping here in my new home.”

It was widely known that Messi would be leaving PSG. The mystery was where he was going. Some thought Messi eventually would choose to play for Al-Hilal in Saudi Arabia, following longtime rival Cristiano Ronaldo to a kingdom where some clubs now are funded by its sovereign wealth fund. Going back to Barcelona, a storied franchise where he spent most of his career, was another possibility.

In the end, Miami won. An idea that co-owner David Beckham began floating publicly in 2021 — two years before, evidently, the team actually started thinking about how to pull this off — has now become reality.

“After winning the World Cup and not being able to return to Barcelona, it was my turn to go to the league of the United States to live football in another way,” Messi said in June when announcing his decision.

He led Argentina to the World Cup title last December. Messi has more than 800 goals in his career for club and country, making him one of the greatest scorers in the sport’s history. He scored twice in last year’s World Cup final against France, a match that ended 3-3 with Argentina prevailing 4-2 on penalty kicks.

He is a four-time Champions League winner and his 129 goals in the top club competition are second to Ronaldo’s 140. Messi has won 10 La Liga titles and two Ligue 1 championships, seven Copa del Reys and three Club World Cups plus a Copa América and Olympic gold medal for Argentina.

“Ten years ago, when I started my journey to build a new team in Miami, I said that I dreamt of bringing the greatest players in the world to this amazing city,” Beckham said. “Players who shared the ambition I had when I joined LA Galaxy to help grow football in the USA and to build a legacy for the next generation in this sport that we love so much.

“Today that dream came true.”

The club had a road match Saturday at St. Louis, yet when word got out that Messi may have been at the team’s facility that morning a couple hundred fans showed up just hoping for a glimpse, not even deterred by a late-morning thunderstorm. Many wore Messi jerseys — some the light blue of Argentina, some the pink-and-black of Inter Miami. Some carried flags; one carried a sign mostly in Spanish, but the words “Messi” and “GOAT” made the messaging clear.

It’s just part of a welcome party that is only getting started.

Messi was seen at a Publix supermarket near Fort Lauderdale — the grocery chain is an Inter Miami sponsor — with his family earlier in the week, and the cart had a few items picked out by the kids: Froot Loops, Cap’n Crunch, Lucky Charms. The scene went viral by the time he hit the checkout lane.

A serial goal scorer is evidently a cereal fan as well.

And now, it’s time for the soccer to start. Inter Miami plans to introduce Messi on Sunday night, at an event the club is calling “The Unveil.” Shakira is rumored to be attending, and tickets are long gone for the show that has been anticipated for weeks.

Hopes for the franchise are now officially sky-high. Inter Miami has never contended for a title; Messi could change everything in a hurry for a team that has won only 34% of its matches in MLS play.

“Lionel Messi is an incomparable talent,” Inter Miami sporting director Chris Henderson said. “What he brings on and off the field will elevate everyone around him and we’re excited to have him at Inter Miami.”

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It happened on Thursday night at the Yar Adua Conference centre, Abuja.

Some of the most outstanding athletes in Nigeria’s Olympic sports in the past six decades (therefore all Olympians), assembled for a special bi-annual re-union organised to remind their government and prick the conscience of Nigerians about the pledge embedded permanently in eternal words within their national anthem, words passionately sung by the athletes when going into ‘battle’ in their sports: “the Labour of our heroes past, shall never be in vain”.

It was a very emotional night for me because I was given the privileged role of delivering the dinner-talk.

Unfortunately, that meant waiting till the tail end of the event, when all the awards would have been given, tributes paid ànd the lavish citation of awardees read and dinner served.

Emmanuel Babayaro, the Secretary-General of the Nigerian Olympians Association, called me after the event and lamented that it was a poor idea to have put my speech after dinner, because soon after, the big hall emptied of the invited guests.

My dinner-talk ended up as a sermon to the Olympians. It was meant to take the audience into the world of Olympic athletes, to be presented from my personal first-hand experience of the Olympics since 1968 to date. It was to serve also as a reminder of what it takes and what it means to be an Olympian.

Before going into how that turned out, permit me to tell you about the award and awardees.

The hall was packed with awardees and their ‘supporters’. The most notable recipients included the Deputy-Governor of Edo State, the wife of the immediate past Governor of Benue State, the immediate past Minister of Sport, the President of the Nigerian Olympic Committee, and several other outstanding athletes from past Olympic games.

All of that went well.
Then, my sermon.

My earliest impression about the Olympics, derived from Greek mythology, is that the the sports events at the Games were the pastime of gods on Mount Olympus. The gods would run, jump and fight to the cheers of the large population of angels. Humans were not in the picture.

The news from Mexico that hit the airwaves with a bang in Nigeria was that the Green Eagles, the national team of Nigeria, that quietly went to football’s first Olympic Games, had held ‘giant’ Brazil to an unbelievable 3-3 draw! That attracted every Nigerian’s attention.

It was the first realisation that humans took part in the Olympics. Our footballers were human. We were familiar with them. They were flesh and blood. The Olympic ‘gods’ were actually human: Peter Fregene, Inua Lawal Rigogo, Samuel Garba, Peter Anieke, and so on. It shattered a myth.

Last Thursday night, for the first time since that team returned to Nigeria in the summer of 1968, the Nigerian Olympians Association, invited three surviving members of that historic team to Abuja to honour them.

They were celebrated and given special awards. The gladiators were Durojaiye Adigun, Ganiyu Salami and Kenneth Olayombo. Kenneth actually scored two goals in that memorable match.

Four years later in 1972, now freed from the psychological prison that Olympians were not human, a Nigerian boxer went to the Munich Games and fought his way to Nigeria’s first medal, a Bronze. Last Thursday night, Isaac Ikhuoria was present to receive his well deserved award.

Since Ikhuoria, boxing has become a good source of medals for Nigeria at the Games.

In 1976, Nigeria, now fully prepared for an onslaught on the Theatre of dreams, took probably the most powerful squad in the country’s history to the Montreal Olympics. The team was pulled out of the Games at the last minute to ‘fight’ a global political cause, and the athletes, therefore, missed out on fulfilling their greatest dreams.

Moscow 1980 was a most uneventful Olympics. It was marred by the politics of the Cold War between the USA and the USSR over Afghanistan. Taking a page from the book of the consequence of the 1976 boycott, led by Nigeria and Tanzania, the USA led their own boycott of the Mosçow games by Western countries.

The power of sport was now evident, a tool that can be deployed to serve various purposes even outside of sport.

FoU Nigeria, Moscow was barren.

1984, Los Angeles Games. The USSR avenged the treatment by the USA in 1980. They marred the Games with their own boycott, along with their allies.

But Nigerians seized the opportunity to make their mark. Led by Innocent Egbunike, Henry Amike, and a superb 4 x 400m relay quartet, they resumed their Olympic hunt for medals with the country’s first Silver medal in Track and Field.

In 1988, in Seoule, South Korea, Nigeria had a large squad that included football again and tennis for the first time.

For some reason, it was more memorable for its lack of medals.

At the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, it was both historical and memorable for right and wrong reasons. On the eve of the Games, one of the fastest girls in the world was a Nigerian. Along with a few others, she was charged and suspended for drugs usage.

FoU Nigeria, it was a shattering development, particularly for àthletes that had spent 4 previous years, come rain, come shine, pounding the tracks and the fields in search of a few seconds, minutes or even milimetres that could change their lives forever.

Meanwhile, some other athletes wrote their names in the history books at Barcelona ’92. Mary Onyali led a quartet relay team that also included Christy Okpara-Thompson to run a race that defined the true essence of ‘winning’ at the Olympics. Thè quartet came third but were celebrated more than the teams that came first and second because of the manner they celebrated third place. Mary and Christy were in Abuja last Thursday and were both celebrated.

The 1996 Atlanta Games came and became the best Olympics for Nigeria, ever.

For Chioma Ajunwa, it marked a vindication. From the depths of hell four years before, she emerged, rose and became the brightest star in the constellation with a performance and a result of a life time. Her Gold medal remains Nigeria’s only individual Gold medal to date.

Her victory opened the flood gates to more victories: a second Gold Medal in Football; Silver medals and Bronze medals in other events.

At this point, Nigerian athletes had joined the club of gods and goddesses of the Olympics.

From Atlanta Nigeria finally launched into the spirit of the Olympics as proper and equal contenders.

From Sydney 2000 and thereafter, a new generation of gods and goddesses was born and bred. Some of them were remembered and received awards last Thursday night.

It was indeed, a great night of bright Stars.

Through the generations of these gods and goddesses, I had been a LIVE witness.

I am thinking.

Why would I, an ordinary football player, without any imprint on the Olympics landscape, be the one to tell the story of Olympians?

I think my purpose for being an Olympian is to be a part of it in order to document them, experience what it takes to be an Olympian and to regularly remind the athletes that it is the hardest status to achieve in sports. That it is a long, lonely, expensive, hard, and challenging journey, strewn all the way with the requirements of self-sacrifice, hard work, highest level of discipline, single-mindedness, supreme patience, pain, failures, injuries and disappointments.

Yet, at the end, all of these come down to a few seconds, or minutes, of competing and hoping to win against the very best opponents in the world.

It is no mean feat and should not be treated with levity, laxity, or, worst of all, taken for granted. It is hard! If others do not, Olympians must constantly remind themselves and each other of their hard-earned successes and sacrifices in sport.

They must always remind themselves never to forget what Nelson Mandela said about the power of sport to change the world. His life was influenced greatly by the boycott of 1976 when Nigerian athletes led other African patriots to make the ultimate sacrifice to boycott the Games and support his cause and that of his people in South Africa.

That sacrifice was party responsible for the end of Apartheid in South Africa, Mandela’s release from jail, his ascension as the first Black President of a new South Africa, and granting the hosting rights of the first FIFA World Cup to be held in Africa to South Africa.

That ‘power’ of sport is still available and must be deployed creatively by Nigeriàn Olympians to change their lives, impact their country and make the world a better place.

They can do those things if only they always remember that, indeed, they are gods and goddesses!

The most hotly anticipated tennis match of the year takes place today as Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic face off in a historic match.

Mayra Bueno Silva defeats Holly Holm via submission (standing guillotine) at 0:38 of round 2

Mayra Bueno Silva just picked up what is undoubtedly the biggest win of her career.

The fight ended with a rare standing guillotine/ninja choke against the fence, giving Mayra her third consecutive submission inside the octagon. The Brazilian endured a close opening round with Holm before seizing the opportunity as Holly pushed her against the fence. Mayra had the choke locked in tight immediately and even maintained control as Holm spun them around in an attempt to break free.

Bueno Silva is now tied with Ronda Rousey for the most submission wins in women’s bantamweight history (3). This is only the second time in Holm’s career that she has lost by submission, with the first coming at UFC 196 against Meisha Tate.

Mayra followed up on her victory (which earned a performance bonus) with a very vulnerable and inspiring post-fight interview detailing her struggles with life:

“Recently I found myself in a huge huge depression, I thought that life was not worth it anymore – find somebody, go and talk (to them), reach out to somebody. The victory is always there.”

Mayra Bueno Silva (Fabiano Buskei translation) post-fight UFC Vegas 77

Jack Della Maddalena defeats Bassil Hafez via split decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)

Jack Della Maddalena finally got his chance to fight after he had two opponents pull out of bouts scheduled for UFC 290, and a fight is certainly what he got.

Bassil Hafez was able to trouble JDM early on with the threat of some takedowns and a willingness to exchange in the pocket. 14 men previously attempted to fight in a phone booth with Jack Della Maddalena and they were all punished heavily for it; Hafez actually performed well in that area early on. Jack was able to find some more success in the second round, almost finishing Hafez. The third round was even more in Jack’s favor as he had Hafez on wobbly legs multiple times.

In the end, JDM went the distance for the first time in his UFC run and got the victory. He even threw a small dig at the judges during his post-fight interview, despite being crowned the winner:

“I thought it could go either way. So, when I heard it was a split- the judges always don’t make good decisions so, (we) might have a good show.”

Jack Della Maddalena post-fight UFC Vegas 77

Other Results:

Francisco Prado defeats Ottman Azaitar via TKO at 4:05 of round 1

Francisco Prado dropped Ottman Azaitar with a spinning elbow and followed up with thunderous ground and pound to get the finish. Azaitar was desperately hanging on as Prado continued his ground assault. Eating unanswered punches in the process, Ottman received a stern “fight back” from the referee; Ottman decided to give a thumbs up to the ref as Prado was fully postured up raining down fight-ending shots. The ref quickly called the fight off, and Ottman protested heavily soon after.

Jun Yong Park defeats Albert Duraev via submission (rear-naked choke) at 4:45 of round 2

Jun Yong Park picked up yet another submission win and is now tied for the second-longest active win streak in the middleweight division (four consecutive victories, Du Plessis holds a six-fight win streak). After dropping Duraev with a short left elbow, “The Iron Turtle” swarmed him hunting for the submission. Once he flattened Duraev out from the back position, Park sank in a rear-naked choke and ended the contest, with a victory dance to boot.

Norma Dumont defeats Chelsea Chandler via unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27)

Norma Dumont extended her win streak to three in a row with a decisive victory over Chelsea Chandler. Dumont looked impressive in the sense that she won virtually all aspects of this fight, but her performance was ultimately overshadowed by Chelsea Chandler’s 40-yard dash:

Nazim Sadykhov defeats Terrance McKinney via submission (rear-naked choke) at 1:07 of round 2

Nazim Sadykhov got off a beautiful submission (with a bit of help from grabbing the cage) and finished Terrance McKinney early on in the second. That’s six consecutive finishes and nine straight victories overall for the Ray Longo product. Nazim was able to trap one of Terrance’s arms with his left leg from the back position, leaving McKinney with just one limb to defend himself. Keep an eye out for Nazim Sadykhov, he may be one of those fighters that climbs the ranks quicker than most given his level of competition just one year into his UFC run.