Lionel Messi Enters The Best Player Candidate In Major League Soccer

JAKARTA - Inter Miami club captain Lionel Messi is on the list of 11 best players in Major League Soccer (MLS) 2025, whose assessments are determined by journalists, players and engineering staff of MLS clubs.

Quoted from the Inter Miami page in Jakarta, Sunday, on the list, Messi was chosen to be the best striker of MLS2025 with Denis Bouangan (Los Angeles FC) and Andres Dryer (San Diego FC).

The best midfielder for MLS 2025 is Sebastian Berhalter (Vancouver Whitecaps), Evander (Cincinnati), Cristian Roldan (Settle Sounders).

While the best defenders areTristan Blackmon (Vancover Whitecaps), Alex Totalando City, Jakob Glenes (Philadelphia Union) and Kai Wagner (Philadelphia Union). Then the best goalkeeper is Dayne St Clair (Minnesota United).

In addition, Inter Miami also announced that Messi was one of the finalists fighting for the MLS' best player trophy, the "Landon Donovan MLS MVP Award" season 2025, the award he got in 2024.

The announcement of the 2025 MLS MVP Award winners will be announced by the end of the year.

If successful in obtaining it, Lionel Messi will be the first player in MLS history to win the award for two consecutive seasons.

Messi showed a very good performance in the regular MLS 2025 season, where he ended with a record 29 goals from 28 matches.

The 38-year-old also made history with his team by becoming Inter Miami's first player to become the MLS' top scorer since the club was founded in 2018.

Messi is the third player since 2005 to score at least 29 goals in the regular MLS season after Jose Martinez (31 goals in 2018) and Carlos Vela (34 goals in 2019).

Then, Messi's average goal of 1.03 per game became his second best since 2005 after Carlos Vela in 2019 with 1.10 per game.

Messi has also been named the player with the most goals without penalties in the regular season in MLS history. Of his 29 goals, only one was executed from the spot.

Messi's other record for the 2025 regular season was that he was the first player in MLS history to score at least two goals in one game for 10 games, five of which were made in a row.

The score broke the record for eight matches made by Stern John (1998), Mamadou Diallo (2000) and Zlatan Ibrahimovic (2019).

In addition to getting the most goals, the AssistMessi in the 2025 MLS regular season is 19 times, also being the best.

A total of 48 goals contribution to Inter Miami at MLS 2025 is also history, where he became the first MLS player to make at least 36 goal contributions in two consecutive seasons (2024, 2025).

However, Lionel Messi's flashy achievements could not bring Inter Miami to the 2025 MLS regular season.

Inter Miami, coached by Javier Mascherano, is in third place in the 2025 MLS regular season standings with 65 points from 34 matches. However, they will fight in the playoffs to fight for the MLS Cup.

Most recently in the playoffs, Messi took Inter Miami through to the eastern semifinals after eliminating Nashville SC. In the semifinals, Inter Miami will face Cincinnati.