Thousands of fans, many of them in Lionel Messi jerseys, swarmed the Inter Miami team bus as it pulled slowly and carefully into the hotel in San Salvador at 1 a.m. Friday morning. By daybreak, videos on social media showed street vendors all over El Salvador’s capital hawking pink No. 10 Messi jerseys for as cheap as $5 in anticipation of Inter Miami’s preseason opening match against the El Salvador national team, which ended in a scoreless tie. It isn’t every day that Messi, and his former FC Barcelona teammates Luis Suarez, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba visit Central America, so Friday night’s game had the city buzzing. It was such a big deal that Nayib Bukele, the President of El Salvador, paid a visit to the Inter Miami squad and shook players’ hands at the hotel.
The El Salvador game was the first of seven preseason matches Inter Miami will play over the next few weeks in five countries. The team will play in Dallas on Monday, head home for a few days and then travel 23,000 miles for a pair of games in Saudi Arabia, a game in Hong Kong and a game in Tokyo before closing the preseason with a home game against Argentine club Newell’s Old Boys, the hometown team of Messi and Miami coach Tata Martino. Apple TV will broadcast the games from Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Fort Lauderdale to its MLS Season Pass subscribers. The most highly anticipated is a Feb. 1 game against Cristiano Ronaldo’s Saudi club Al Nassr, although there are reports that Ronaldo suffered a calf injury and may not be fit in time. Friday’s game against El Salvador was the Inter Miami debut of Suarez, the Uruguayan star forward who played with Messi at Barcelona from 2014 to 2020. The duo have long wanted to play together again and finally got their wish.