Messi vs. Muller in MLS Cup shows how far the league has come, but does anyone care? - ESPN

You probably missed it, I'm guessing.

That could apply to anything that has happened in MLS this season. With most of the league's matches airing on Apple TV and behind the MLS Season Pass paywall, fewer people were watching America's domestic soccer league in its final full season before the 2026 World Cup.

Of course, we can't confirm those numbers because every trillion-dollar streamer protects its viewership data like it's Area 51. And every time someone with knowledge of the data talks about the data, we have no reason to believe what they say because, well, they have no reason to tell us the truth. Just take MLS commissioner Don Garber's comments from earlier this season that viewership is up «almost 50% compared to last year.» Meanwhile, league-wide attendance is down from last season. Only one of those two things is a verifiable fact.

That's all despite the league getting exactly what it wanted: Lionel Messi just had the greatest season in MLS history.

In short, Messi scored more non-penalty goals and generated more expected assists than anyone ever has. Not only that, he got Inter Miami to the MLS Cup final after winning the team won its last three games by a combined score of 13-1. And on Saturday, he'll be squaring off against Thomas Müller and the Vancouver Whitecaps, who took down the wildly successful expansion franchise San Diego FC in the Western Conference finals after beating Son Heung-Min and LAFC in the semis.

Expansion is working, superstars are beating other superstars in the playoffs, and Messi is still standing with one game to go.

Yet, for it to work out as well as it is, it takes an incredible level of corporate mismanagement to somehow still have Messi's first MLS Cup become nothing more than