The Billionaire Who Brought Messi To Miami

Miami is a fantastic city, it's beautiful, you know, we have the warmth of the sun on the ocean and it's just a great lifestyle, a great lifestyle for our kids, it's safe, great for business, so you know, Miami is like that. Jorge Moss is one of the most prominent Cuban-American businessmen in the United States, he is the president of mtech, a publicly traded infrastructure engineering and construction company, and Jorge M has also become one of the most influential figures in soccer American with what he has done as managing owner of Inter Miami, so when Moss joins Inter.

Miami's ownership group in 2019 decides from day one that I want Miami to be a city of stars, we're going to go out and target the best players on Earth and Messi was immediately at the top of their list. we're commissioners, that's a team, that's the Miami team, those are my fans' teams, but what a blessing and to really be able to, I think, leave a mark and make a difference not only in South Florida but for the sport. of soccer in the United States for us. This is a tremendous blessing, so when David Beckham came to play in major league soccer in 2007, in order to bring him in, they needed to offer him a unique deal and one of the elements of that deal was that they gave him the option to start. an expansion team for $25 million, so Beckham's career continues, when it's over, he exercises that option and at some point, one or the other, they decide okay, we want to target Miami as a market, so the commissioner of Major League Soccer, Don Garber, decides it would really help. this effort and make it stronger if we had a strong local partner involved and who better than Jorge Moss, you know, born and raised in Miami, a prominent Cuban-American businessman very popular in the community, very successful, so cold call Jorge Moss and says: Jorge, is that you? interested in participating in Miami's MLS project, Moss hesitates at first.

Obviously, starting a new professional sports franchise is a very intense endeavor. In many cases, you know that most teams lose money and that Inter Miami becomes profitable this year, for example, it was the first time in their short history, so he meets with Beckham and they immediately get along, they have the vision shared and are on the same page. and Moss calls Garber back and tells him I'm all for it. I saw that it's a great opportunity, a great opportunity to bring the fifth professional sports team to the city that saw me in my hometown, that I love and, most importantly, leave a mark on a legacy that you know of doing something special and do something different the first time I met Jor Mas, he had a great vision not only for the team and the stadium project, but he wanted to do it and he told us that he wanted to be the best team in the Major.

League Soccer wanted to have one of the best soccer teams in the world and wanted to help Drive Major League Soccer to be one of the best leagues in the world and we must not lose sight of the fact that he had David Beckham as a teammate and David knows a great history with the sport and it's such a deep connection with the best players to ever play the sport and I think David was one of the great players in the history of the game when you put the two together he was a superpower this was a complicated project Miami is a city very well developed in real estate it is difficult for us to get public financing for a stadium and the approvals were complicated so we knew that going into this there were real headwinds.

I think for anyone who knows Heos or has the opportunity to spend time with them, this is one of the most optimistic people I've met in my career. No, never means no, it means how could we get it. fact no challenge is too big no vision is unattainable in Miami when we launched I couldn't have launched in more difficult circumstances than covid was, you know there was a point a few weeks after we canceled our first game in at the beginning of Co where we didn't know what what the future held for us, we invested hundreds of millions of dollars, we had all that momentum and you know, but listen, we just, you know, we got to work, we adapted, we adapted and, again, we continued, you know, working hard and Making sure that when people think of football and the United States, I always wanted to think of Miami Landing.

The solitary Messi is a herculean achievement for this league. I mean, obviously, it's been compared a lot to when they

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in David Beckham. At the moment when Messi is at Barcelona, ​​you know he is at the peak of his career, to a certain extent you have to accept the fact that Messi was not going to come here at 30 years old, you know, that doesn't mean that young players don't do it. I didn't come here but Messi was in a good situation so he moved to PSG in 202 and towards the end of his PSG career rumors are circulating about what he will do from 2019 and during this whole period Joras is connecting with the family, communicates with them by being a friend, builds a relationship, shows who he is as a person and talks about what he wants to do with Miami.

He had a vision for this club and, according to many, it was far-fetched and he achieved it. Vision, made a compelling offer, built a relationship and there were skeptics along the way, there were people who said it couldn't be done, forget it and you know, Jorge, I'll shut up, the noise goes back to our roots and how we've built. everything in our family, you know, work hard, never say never and have faith and have faith that the dream and the vision of bringing the best player in the world to join Miami in Major League Soccer was going to happen, it couldn't happen. , maybe, but it was going to happen.

It just so happened that I was driven by the belief that we had all the elements and that it was best for all parties. There were many of you who doubted knowing, oh my God, Horas is chasing the lonely Messi for the guy he. We'll never catch him, he doesn't stand a chance, you know, and again, kind of like a chip on our shoulder, you know we're going to get this done, so the fact that I was able to build a privileged relationship with Leonel and his family and specifically with Father Jorge over the years, I think it created the possibility and the probability that you knew we were going to sign him in the summer of 2023, so you know when I knew he was going to come to the team sometime in late May, a few weeks before he announced his decision from Paris, you know, it was the culmination of a lot of hard work and I knew it would have a positive impact, but to see the impact it had on the field on the field, the impact it had with the fans when we travel, thousands of people outside our hotel, you know, the people on our team bus route going to the stadiums, lining them up for the games, they're exhausted, the attention around Leonell and what he's been able to do make especially.

Coming off the heels of winning the World Cup in Argentina, he's been frankly incredible and, commercially, the number of partners and partnerships we've been able to establish and sponsors that have come in wanting to have a relationship. with the internal Miami and the solitary Messi it has been, frankly, I think beyond because what we have taken advantage of is global in nature. I think for me the most important part of having Leo here is that he decided that this was his club and his preferred league, it is a strategic way. More important than the financial benefit is telling the world that MLS is worthy of the best player in the game being able to know how to play and be the guy he wants to be, he just wants to go out and win games, then you add to that the commercial value of that with ticket sales and merchandise sales both locally in Miami and throughout the league and it's dramatic, it's no different than when I was playing in League One in France or playing with PSG, whether you're playing in La Liga or playing.

With FC Barcelona there are enormous commercial values ​​for having a player like Messi. MZC is a publicly traded infrastructure engineering and construction company. They've diversified what they do a little more recently. They have gotten into renewable energy basically about 50 years ago. Jorge M's father, Jorge Mas kosa, who was another very accomplished businessman and a legendary supporter of the Cuban exile, also bought this company which was later renamed Church and Tower and they dealt with telecommunications and different types of construction and revitalized This business that was I failed at that time and I turned it into basically a pretty big company initially for a long time.

Many times I wanted to be a baseball player. That was the first sport I loved. Secondly, I wanted you to know as I evolved. a teenager, so I wanted, you know, I wanted to run the family business, you know, we're in the infrastructure and construction business, and you know, that was my dream, and you know, dreams come true when Jorge Mas, the youngest, he went away. there and worked there full time, he

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this era of change with the business, we automated their billing systems, they brought computers into the office, but what really put things on the path that led us to today is Hurricane Andrew that comes to Florida and 1992. and Moss make this aggressive play to basically rebuild the state's infrastructure and it was not an easy task, but they were successful, the company's revenue increased enormously and it led to this reverse merger with one of their competitors that set the foundations for mzc to emerge.

And since then, MZC has grown substantially last year, in fact, they reported 1 billion in annual revenue. We're in a trailer in a dirt yard in South Dade County, working, you know, trying to make enough money to make payroll and feed the population. family, you know, and today we are a Fortune 400 company again dreaming that anything is possible, but the early days and I remember them vividly because those are Our Roots, you know, it's just hard work, persevere, work, you know, just the days routinely it was 16. at 6 p.m., not at eight, my father was very special, he was my best friend, a mentor, my best memories with my father and my brothers were always the dolphin games on Sundays, we are passionate fans and rabid and just great, you know, watching the The Dolphins won the AFC Championship and went to the Super Bowl 84 times with Dam Marino in his rookie year.

It was a high point in our family sports tradition, frankly, like you knew the Holy Grail would have been to own the Dolphins. You know, at that time, when I was a young kid from South Florida, rabid, you know the Dolphins fans, but life has taken me to where I should be able to share this journey, you know, with my brother and with my family . It has truly been a blessing, it is just another beginning, another chapter finished and now we move on. I have learned many lessons in our corporate life that you are never measured, you know that we are a publicly traded company and you are not measured either. the price of your shares and the team never measure you only by wins and losses, they measure you by building a culture of success by building one that can overcome the ups and downs, there will always be downs, there will always be you We know certain failures and obstacles, but the The question is how you deal with them, it's how you persevere, we will have Leonel Messi here for two, three, four years, as long as Leono wants to play and that is incredible in itself, but we are also looking forward to it. to what is a post-Messi era, and you know, I can anticipate that the interior of Miami will always have one of the best players in the world on our roster, I hope you know that along with my fellow owners in Major League Soccer and then four or five.

Within years we may have 1,520 of the 80 to 100 best players in the world here, but I am extremely optimistic about the future of our league, about the future of sport in our country, we want to be one of the best leagues in the world. We want people to think of us the way they think of the Premier League and I think we are already part of that group of the best leagues in the world, but we want to be the League in which someone makes the decision to go to Manchester City or they are going to go. to New York City or they're going to go to Chicago, they're going to go to Los Angeles or they're going to go to Madrid and we have work to do to continue to be part of the global conversation and be a league of choice for all the best players in the world and be a league of choice for the young players that are emerging in our world, but I believe that we will make Miami an incredible city, very glamorous, global, but it is not that this is a city built on the dreams of so many families that They come to this country looking for nothing more than freedom and an opportunity to create a better life for their families and I am hopeful that their inner Miami is a reflection of our community and that team, so that has been our dream and aspiration.