Lionel Messi will miss Wednesday's MLS All-Star Game for the second year running — but this time, unlike last summer, nobody at league headquarters is reaching for the rulebook.
Messi and Inter Miami teammate Rodrigo De Paul have both been withdrawn from the All-Star roster for the game against a Liga MX All-Star XI at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte on Wednesday night, with the accompanying Skills Challenge held the evening before. Both players had been voted onto the squad by fans.
The pair are covered by a mandatory rest window rather than any injury. Under FIFPro's player-welfare guidelines, footballers are entitled to up to 21 days off following a major international tournament, and MLS and the players' union agreed before this season that clubs would hold individual conversations with each returning World Cup player to set an appropriate recovery and return-to-training schedule.
"After players complete their World Cup participation, each club will hold individual discussions to determine appropriate rest schedules," the league said in confirming the exemption — language that, this time, removes any question of discipline.
The timing traces back to Argentina's run to the World Cup final on July 19 at MetLife Stadium, where Messi played the full 120 minutes as his side lost 1-0 in extra time to Spain. He still finished the tournament with the Silver Boot for eight goals and the Silver Ball as the competition's second-best player, medals that came with a physical toll the rest agreement is designed to offset.
It is a markedly different position from a year ago. In 2025, Messi and Jordi Alba sat out the All-Star Game without securing prior league approval and were both hit with a one-match suspension under an MLS rule that bars any snubbing player from his club's next fixture — in Messi's case, a home game against Inter Miami's Eastern Conference rivals FC Cincinnati.
Inter Miami's ownership was furious at the time. Managing owner Jorge Mas branded the sanction "draconian" and said Messi was "extremely upset" at being suspended for a match his club had chosen to rest him for on medical grounds. "It's a bad rule, but it's a rule nonetheless," Mas said then, while insisting the decision to sit Messi and Alba out had been the club's call, not the players'.
This year's carve-out effectively resolves that dispute for World Cup finalists: because the rest period is pre-agreed rather than a unilateral snub, no suspension applies, and Messi and De Paul can be reintegrated into the Inter Miami squad on a schedule set jointly by the club and league, with a return expected in early August.
MLS has filled the gaps left by Messi and De Paul, along with two unrelated late withdrawals. Chicago Fire forward Philip Zinckernagel replaces Hugo Cuypers, who left MLS altogether after a move to Liga MX side CF Monterrey, while Houston Dynamo's Guilherme steps in for the injured Mbekezeli Mbokazi. Nashville's Andrés Cubas and Inter Miami's own Yannick Bright fill the two slots vacated by De Paul and Messi.
The rest of the World Cup contingent due to feature includes Son Heung-min, Thomas Müller, Tim Ream, Max Arfsten and Peter Musa for MLS, against a Liga MX side featuring Keylor Navas, Gilberto Mora and Jesús Gallardo — none of whom played in the final and so fall outside the extended rest window applied to Messi and De Paul.
