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“For us it’s Lucho (Acosta), for example,” says Teddy Kerr, who serves as FC Cincinnati’s kit man. Messi has long been sponsored by Adidas, and other huge stars in MLS - Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Wayne Rooney, David Beckham and the like - frequently gave away a handful of kits per match, say their equipment managers. The club would often make a rack of Beckham’s shirts in both long-sleeved and short-sleeved varieties (Becks famously preferred the former throughout his whole career) and give nearly every one away every match.īeckham never got charged for those and Lionel Messi almost certainly won’t get charged either. Vargas said Beckham was far and away the Galaxy’s biggest draw in terms of requests. We are also the Galaxy - we are a big club, so everyone is going to want the shirt.” And then we’ve had other players that see those players giving their shirts away all the time and they want to do the same. “But when you have Beckham, or Robbie Keane or Donovan, every other player wants the shirt. “We try to keep the number low with all of our players,” Vargas says. Steven Gerrard, Landon Donovan and Robbie Keane. In that span, he’s handled kits for a laundry list of MLS luminaries: David Beckham. Raul Vargas has been the equipment manager for the Galaxy since the club’s inaugural season in 1996. On the other end of the spectrum, other clubs can be particularly stingy about giveaways, setting the number well below 10. Other clubs, like the LA Galaxy, for example, don’t adhere to the limits and won’t charge a player if they give too many shirts away. That fee can vary from team to team - an employee at one club put the figure at $90, about $60 less than an MLS fan would pay for the same jersey. What happens if a player goes beyond those 10 allotted “giveaway” kits? In many cases, they get charged. Bench players who see very little action might spend an entire year wearing the same two or three shirts. If a shirt takes minor damage - say it has a tiny tear or hole in it - it will often get laundered and reused as a “blood kit,” equipment managers from various MLS teams say. Teams launder and reuse most match kits after each game, unless they’re damaged. Ever seen an MLS player throw his jersey into the crowd? That, too comes out of their allotment. Most players get an allotment of four home kits, four away kits and a pair of “Parley” kits, made from ocean plastic and worn by all teams for one weekend of games, that they can give away or exchange with opponents. But generally speaking, the logistics of any given player giving someone the shirt off his back are a bit more complex.Īdidas, Major League Soccer’s official equipment sponsor, sends a shipment of match jerseys to each club at the onset of the year and most of any given club’s players have to adhere to a strict number of shirts they can give away over the course of a season - usually around 10. Most would assume that there will be a never-ending well of shirts for Miami to draw from, and in Messi’s case, that might be true.

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Miami’s kit man will likely have his hands full over the next two-and-a-half years as he cranks out Messi kits. The two shirts that Messi has handed out in MLS are likely the first of dozens and dozens of match-worn jerseys that will end up in the hands of his opponents.

If not and there is someone else that asks me, I will swap it with them. “If there is an Argentine, I will swap with an Argentine. “I don’t ask for shirts,” Messi told Argentine outlet TYC IN 2017. It felt almost prearranged because it likely was. It felt a bit like a fait accompli - Almada was Messi’s Argentina teammate at the World Cup in Qatar, and as Messi strolled over to him after the final whistle, not a single one of his teammates made an attempt at nabbing the kit. The maneuvering and deal-making to get one of his kits will be lively, no matter where he goes in MLSĪfter Messi’s second match in the U.S., a Leagues Cup encounter against Atlanta United, Thiago Almada ended up with Messi’s shirt. Cruz Azul, and Rotondi in particular, were torched by a select few in the Mexican press for the display, but who can blame him? It’s Lionel Messi. In few professions would it be considered permissible or even appropriate to display that level of fandom for a colleague. Following Cruz Azul’s 2-1 loss to Miami, he got his wish, exchanging shirts with Messi in the tunnel.

Rotondi, an Argentine, got his start as a youth player at Newell’s Old Boys, as Messi did. In the weeks leading up to his side’s Leagues Cup match against Inter Miami, Cruz Azul’s Carlos Rotondi said that he’d “destroy the locker room” if any other player got Messi’s shirt after the match. Even Messi’s opponents have displayed their own adoration for the Argentine.