Inter Miami CF captain Lionel Messi was named the 2025 MLS MVP on Tuesday, becoming the first player in league history to win the award in two consecutive seasons.
Messi is also only the second player to ever win the trophy twice, joining Preki (Predrag Radosavljević) who won the award in 1997 and 2003.
Editor’s Picks
1 Related
The Inter Miami captain led the league with a total of 29 goals in 28 games to clinch the 2025 Golden Boot and help Inter Miami to a third-place finish in the Eastern Conference. He added 19 assists.
The Argentina forward now stands as the only player in MLS history to record at least 36 goal contributions in a single season on multiple occasions, doing so in 2024 and 2025.
“He was fantastic the whole season, with the numbers and also with the commitment,” Inter Miami coach and longtime Messi teammate Javier Mascherano said.
He added six goals and nine assists in the playoffs as Miami went on to win its first MLS Cup with a 3-1 win over the Vancouver Whitecaps at Chase Stadium on Dec. 6.
It was a long year, with many matches and a lot of travel, but also a historic year for the club, as it was the first time we won the MLS Cup,” Messi said Tuesday upon receiving the award. “It’s a great club, still quite young, and being able to achieve what we did was wonderful, very special.”
Messi beat out finalists Anders Dreyer, Denis Bouanga, Evander and Sam Surridge by earning 70.43% of the total votes. Media, players and clubs participate in the MVP voting.
The World Cup winner received 83.05% of the media vote, 55.17% of the player vote and 73.08% of the club vote to heavily trump the other candidates.
Since joining the club in the summer of 2023, Messi has led Inter Miami to the inaugural Leagues Cup trophy, the 2024 Supporters’ Shield, helped set the record for most points recorded in a single season and now the ultimate with the league title.
Individually, he won the 2023 Newcomer of the Year award, the 2025 Golden Boot and now the 2024 and 2025 MLS MVP trophies.
“I think he’s the unicorn of unicorns,” MLS commissioner Don Garber said of Messi while attending an Inter Miami match earlier in this season’s playoffs. “You know, there’s something about the way he’s wired. He’s thinking about the game like nobody else ever has. His intensity and desire to win is what makes him the greatest of all time. There are a lot of really competitive players, but he has this special sauce, this dynamic that has him so focused on doing what he needs to do to win games.”
This award joins dozens of other individual honors in Messi’s career, including eight Ballon d’Or titles, eight Pichichi trophies as La Liga’s top scorer, six La Liga best player nods, three Best FIFA Men’s Player awards, three UEFA Men’s Player of the Year wins, two FIFA World Cup Golden Balls and no fewer than 15 selections as Argentina’s best player in a given year. He’s also been part of winning 47 trophies for club and country — including the 2022 World Cup — making him the most decorated player the men’s game has ever seen.
“The reality,” Mascherano said as the regular season was ending, “is that Leo clears all doubts.”
