Messi’s Media Aversion Limits His Own Portfolio, Notes Andres Cantor

"He admitted last week that he understands perfect English but he’s shy on speaking it. It’s really hard – I always try to figure how a person of that stature and that notoriety and being the most known person lives. So I think he’s doing fine.”

Messi, The Shohei Of Soccer?

Cantor clearly can’t and won’t claim to be neutral. He admits that calling Argentina matches are the most difficult for him at the World Cup because he has to attempt to balance his personal passion for the national team of his homeland with the need to serve the United States’ multi-national Spanish speaking audience. (That demographic is led by a Mexican-American majority, followed by those with Puerto Rican, Salvadoran, Cuban and Dominican lineage.)

At the same time, it’s hard to deny his point. Messi still draws enormous crowds wherever he goes, but his commercial presence is pretty subdued compared to the prime of others who have existed in a similar athletic orbit: Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods or LeBron James, for example.

If there are comparisions to American sports superstars, they may be in baseball, where Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout, who have both held the mantle of best player alive at times in their careers, have fulfilled American media obligations but remained relatively understated while doing so.

Nico Cantor, Andres’ son who works as an English-language analyst for CBS Sports, echoed the sentiment that it’s clear the Argentine No. 10 agonizes over how his words might be taken.

“I think when Messi speaks, he’s so conscious about every word that he says will make a headline and will go viral, and it will go around the world. So Messi has never been a speaker," he said. "Messi has never been outspoken externally, at least, in situations that are good or in situations that are bad. So I think this is right along the lines of Leo, and it’ll pass over eventually.”

The counterpoint is that if people got more used to Messi speaking regularly, it would become more routine and those words would not be parsed as painstakingly over time. Clearly, there hasn’t been anyone in Messi’s inner circle to make that argument successfully, though he at least has given periodic interviews with Apple TV, the league’s worldwide streaming partner, with whom Messi shares revenue.

A Contagious Quiet

From the outside, what probably makes Messi’s situation more difficult for those covering his club team is that increasingly, the others in his orbit who could share some of that media burden don’t appear particularly willing or skilled at it either.

Andres Cantor says that appears to include Hoyos, the Argentine one-time FC Barcelona youth coach who has served as a surrogate father figure throughout his career and now Miami’s interim manager.

"Guillermo Hoyos, from the little that I’ve listened to him, he’s not very talkative either," Cantor quipped.

Indeed, Hoyos answered only one question following Miami’s shocking 4-3 home defeat to Orlando City on May 2, in which the visitors rallied from a 3-0 deficit.

Following Saturday’s 4-2 rebound win for Miami at Toronto FC, he spoke of the need for the football community, including the media, to protect the all-time great, a message that left many observers surprised and a little confused. Cantor included.

“Honestly, I believe knowing the Argentine psyche, (this is) probably what he meant," Cantor explained. “That he’s such a big star that needs to be protected as much the LeBron James’ of this world. But not in the direct sense that nobody should foul him or … . Honestly I don’t know what to make of what he said because honestly I did not understand it.”

This article was originally published on Forbes.com