Argentine superstar Lionel Messi arrived in Beijing on Saturday for a friendly match before leaving a storied European career to join Major League Soccer side Inter Miami as a free agent.
This is the Argentina captain’s seventh visit to China and his first since 2017.
His arrival was announced in a post on the organizer International Football Invitation’s official Weibo social media site with a video of players stepping off a plane, ahead of Thursday’s Argentina-Australia match in the Chinese capital’s recently rebuilt Workers’ Stadium.
Messi, who lifted the World Cup in Qatar in December and is widely considered to be one of the game’s all-time greats, confirmed this week he will leave French champions Paris St Germain for the U.S. league.