{"id":31743,"date":"2025-07-23T17:46:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T17:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/31743\/"},"modified":"2025-07-23T17:46:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T17:46:07","slug":"lionel-messi-jordi-alba-wont-play-in-mls-all-star-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/31743\/","title":{"rendered":"Lionel Messi, Jordi Alba won’t play in MLS All-Star Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inter Miami CF<\/a> stars Lionel Messi<\/a> and Jordi Alba<\/a> will not play in the MLS<\/a> All-Star Game against the best of Liga MX<\/a> on Wednesday night in Austin, Texas, despite being voted into the roster, MLS officials confirmed.<\/p>\n

MLS officials are set to have a conversation with Inter Miami before deciding the fate of the two players for Saturday’s match against FC Cincinnati<\/a> at Chase Stadium.<\/p>\n

League rules state that any player that chooses not to participate in the event without an approved medical reason can be subject to a one-game suspension, although MLS will not immediately sanction Messi or Alba.<\/p>\n

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Messi and Alba joined the MLS All-Star roster when being selected by the fan and media vote, returning to the squad due to popular demand. Both Messi and Alba made the 2024 All-Star team, though Messi failed to feature in the event after sustaining an ankle injury in the 2024 Copa Am\u00e9rica<\/a> final.<\/p>\n

Alba did participate in last year’s skills challenge and All-Star match against the best of Liga MX in Columbus, Ohio.<\/p>\n

Inter Miami head coach Javier Mascherano originally voiced his concern over the players’ involvement in the event, emphasizing the need for rest.<\/p>\n

“The players are called up, I would like them to be able to rest but that is not my decision,” Mascherano said.<\/p>\n

The 2025 MLS All-Star team will be headlined by San Diego FC<\/a> figure Hirving “Chucky” Lozano<\/a> and LAFC<\/a>‘s Denis Bouanga<\/a>. From the Liga MX side, CF Monterrey star Sergio Ramos<\/a> will be captaining the team when taking on the American league.<\/p>\n

The All-Star concept is foreign to most of the soccer world outside North America, and 14 members of the 30-player MLS squad are from outside the United States, Canada and Mexico.<\/p>\n

Wednesday will mark the league’s 29th All-Star Game as MLS celebrates its 30th season (there was no All-Star event in 2020), and the fourth time it has been played in this format.<\/p>\n

The MLS has won two of the previous three meetings against its border rival league, though Liga MX’s team earned a 4-1 victory in last year’s edition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Inter Miami CF stars Lionel Messi and Jordi Alba will not play in the MLS All-Star Game against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-31743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}