The 12 biggest deals in MLS history.

Lionel Messi, a famous soccer player, is about to sign with Inter Miami of Major League Soccer. This will be seen as the biggest signing in the history of the league.

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Messi is the most successful player to ever play in the league. He has won seven Ballon d’Or awards, four UEFA Champions League gold medals, and the World Cup. He has also won 12 league titles in Europe.

But he isn’t the first famous person to try to take over MLS.

Here is a list of the 12 biggest stars in the league before him over the past 28 years.

MORE: Messi talks about why he won’t go back to Barca and will sign with Inter Miami instead?

David Beckham

Team: LA Galaxy
Season: 2007-2012
Games: 98
Goals/Assists: 18/31
Trophies: — MLS Cup in 2011 and the MLS Supporters’ Shield in 2010

Beckham’s introduction to Major League sports was the first time anything like it had ever happened in American sports. At first, he wasn’t very committed to MLS. In 2008/09 and 2009/10, he joined AC Milan in Serie A during the “offseason,” but once he gave the Galaxy his all, he was a big part of two straight great seasons. The fact that he was in the league helped increase crowds for LA, but even more so for the places they went. His time in MLS started a time of growth that is still going on today.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic

Team: LA Galaxy
Season: 2018-2019
Games: 56
Goals/Assists: 52/13
Trophies: —

The fact that Zlatan was so good as an individual but didn’t do much to help his team win shows how much the league has changed since Becks left. The Galaxy placed fifth in the Western Conference and were out of the 2019 MLS Cup playoffs in the second round. He scored 30 goals that season, which was second most in the league.

It was also a sign of progress that Zlatan could leave the league and go back to an elite club in Europe, AC Milan, where his strike rate would be about the same as in MLS.

Thierry Henry

Team: The New York Red Bulls
Years: 2010–2014
Games: 122
Goals/Assist: 51/37
Trophies: — MLS Supporters’ Shield in 2013

Henry joined the MLS when he was 32 years old. At FC Barcelona, he had gone from scoring 19 goals and getting 7 assists in 29 games to scoring 4 goals and getting 1 assist in 24 games. He was a consistent player in Major League Soccer (MLS). He scored more than 10 goals four times, and his impact as a playmaker grew as he averaged almost 11 assists in his last three seasons.

Kaka

Team: Orlando City
Years: 2015–2017
Games: 75
Goals/Assist: 24/21
Trophies: —

Kaka came to the team, like Messi, as a former Ballon d’Or winner and World Cup champion. He also joined a team that was struggling to keep up with the competition. When Kaka joined Orlando, it was their first year as an expansion team.

Since the team didn’t go anywhere and didn’t make the playoffs, he didn’t seem to have much of an effect in MLS. But Kaka’s stats on a bad team showed that he still had the great ability to make plays that made him one of the best in the world when he was at his best.

Andrea Pirlo

Team: New York City FC
Years: 2015–2017
Games: 69
Goals/Assists: 1/11
Trophies: — UEFA Champions League.

It never made sense for the 2006 World Cup-winning captain of Italy to try to work his magic in a baseball field, and it didn’t help that Pirlo didn’t have as much left as many other players who played in MLS late in their careers. Even though he was 36, he did play in 32 games in 2016 and helped the team finish fourth in the Eastern Conference.

Steven Gerrard

Team: Steven Gerrard is on the LA Galaxy
Years: 2015–2016
Games; 34
Goals/assists: 5/12
Trophies: —

Gerrard was the hero when Liverpool won the UEFA Champions League in 2005. He was also the captain of England 38 times. After playing a goodbye game at Anfield at the end of the 2014/15 Premier League season, he chose to join LA. He might have done better if he had gone straight into teaching.

Frank Lampard

Team: New York City FC
Years: 2015-2016
Games: 29
Goals/Assists: 15/3
Trophies: —

Before Atlanta United showed the league that signing young, developing players like Josef Martinez and Miguel Almiron might be the best way to spend “Designated Player” money, Lampard was part of a wave of superstars who were happy to take a late-career payoff and live in the U.S. as a sort of vacation from all the attention they got back home. But putting Lampard and Pirlo in the middle for NYCFC did not turn them into an MLS powerhouse.

Didier Drogba

Team: Montreal Impact
Years: 2015-2016
Games: 33
Goals/Assists: 21/4
Trophies: —

Impact fans were thrilled when Drogba joined the team in the middle of the 2015 season. This pushed the average attendance up from around 17,000 to a series of full-capacity crowds of 20,081 until the end of the season.

The team made the playoffs, but in 2015, they lost in the conference semifinals. In his second season, he was taken out of the starting team late in the year and fined because he refused to sit on the bench.

Wayne Rooney

Team: D.C. United team
Years: 2018-2019
Games: 48
Goals/Assists: 23/13
Trophies: —

In his first season with D.C. United, Rooney scored 12 goals in just 20 games.

And if anyone had any doubts about his dedication to the team, his amazing play late in a tied regular-season game against Orlando City put them to rest. He ran past midfield to stop a counterattack, stole the ball from an opponent, and then sent a pass to teammate Luciano Acosta for the game-winning goal. This helped DCU finish the season with 10 wins, 2 losses, and 3 draws, which got them a spot in the playoffs.

He liked it so much that in 2023, the club made him its boss.

Gareth Bale

Team: Los Angeles Football Club (LAFC)
Years: 2022
Games: 12
Goals/Assists: 2/0
Trophies: — MLS Cup 2022

Bale’s time in MLS could be the strangest thing that any great has done. After getting buried at Real Madrid and only playing five games for them in the 2021–2022 season, Bale signed with LAFC for a modest $1.6 million pay for the 2022 season, likely to get in shape to lead Wales at the World Cup that fall.

During the MLS regular season, he only played twice and scored twice, but he was the hero of the team’s first championship season. Bale’s goal in extra time of the MLS Cup final helped LAFC tie the Philadelphia Union and force a penalty shootout, which his team won.

David Villa

Team: New York City FC
Years: 2015–2018
Games: 117
Goals/Assists: 77/20
Trophies: — MLS MVP (2016)

Villa was a World Cup champion with Spain and won multiple Champions League titles at FC Barcelona. He was able to adapt his style to MLS better than many of the other big stars who came to MLS in 2015. His number of goals is one of the top 35 in the history of the game.

Carlos Valderrama

Team: Miami Fusion, Tampa Bay Mutiny, and Colorado Rapids
Years: 996 to 2002
Games: 175
Goals/Assists: 16/85
Trophies: — The MLS Supporters Shield in 1996 and the MLS MVP award in 1996.

In the 1980s and 1990s, he was a lively star on the Colombian national team. In 1987 and 1993, he was named South American Footballer of the Year, and in 1987, he was the most valuable player at the Copa America. In the early days of MLS, he was one of the first big stars. He was known for his unique mop of hair, and he was named to the league’s all-time Best XI. World Soccer named him one of the 100 best football players of all time in 1999, when he was living in the United States.

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