All of a sudden, after a single summer, the pink jersey is everywhere. Tor Southard was better placed than most, but even he was caught unaware. As Adidas’s senior director for soccer in North America, he had been receiving emails from colleagues for nearly a year asking if the company’s biggest star, Lionel Messi, would be joining Inter Miami, also a client of Adidas. As far as he knew, it was just a rumor. Like the rest of the planet, Southard learned it was true only on June 7, the day Messi announced his intentions in a rare interview with two Spanish news outlets.

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Persons: Tor Southard, Adidas’s, Lionel Messi, Messi Organizations: Inter Miami, Adidas Locations: Buenos Aires, Bangkok, England, Southeast Asia, North America