Lionel Messi and his Inter Miami teammates were greeted by a massive crowd outside the stadium after arriving in El Salvador for their Friday night friendly game.
Miami are opening their seven-game preseason with a friendly against the El Salvador national team, and fans were more than eager to get their first taste of Messi-mania in the early hours of Friday morning.
Videos on X showed what appeared to be thousands of fans pack the streets in Messi and Miami gear before storming the team’s busses for the chance to get a glimpse of the team’s players on the bus.
Tickets for the game have been ranging from $200-$400 and have likely surpassed that amount through third-party vendors.
San Salvador’s Estadio Cuscatlan holds a capacity of 53,400 fans and chances were high that every seat in the stadium will be sold out to cheer for the Miami magician.
Fans in El Salvador stormed Inter Miami’s team buses after they arrived to start preseason
What appeared to be thousands of fans lined the streets with Lionel Messi memorabilia
Messi and Miami were set to begin their preseason with a friendly against the national team
Inter Miami are also set to play friendlies in Dallas, Texas, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, Japan.
Messi was also recently featured in a teaser for an Apple TV docuseries following Argentina’s journey through World Cup.
The four-part show takes supporters behind the scenes of Messi’s five World Cup appearances, culminating in victory in the desert.
Fans were given a first glimpse of the upcoming series last month, when a first trailer dropped showing archive footage from Messi’s younger days, film from the Argentina team bus as well as interviews with Messi himself and soccer icon Gary Lineker.
The series will be called ‘Messi‘s World Cup: The Rise of a Legend’.