Lionel Messi and his Inter Miami teammates were greeted by a huge crowd outside the stadium after arriving in El Salvador for their friendly match on Friday evening.
Miami opens their seven-match preseason with a friendly against the El Salvador national team, and fans were eager to get their first taste of Messi mania in the early hours of Friday morning.
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Tickets for the game range from $200 to $400 and have likely exceeded that amount through third-party vendors.
The Estadio Cuscatlan in San Salvador has a capacity of 53,400 fans and there was a good chance that every seat in the stadium will be sold out to cheer on the magician from Miami.
Fans in El Salvador stormed Inter Miami team buses after they arrived to start preseason
It seemed like thousands of fans lined the streets with Lionel Messi memorabilia
Messi and Miami were scheduled to start their preseason with a friendly match against the national team
Inter Miami will also 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 about Argentina’s journey through the World Cup.
The four-part show takes supporters behind the scenes of Messi’s five World Cup appearances, culminating in the victory in the desert.
Fans got their first glimpse of the upcoming series last month, when an initial trailer was released featuring archive footage from Messi’s younger days, film from the Argentina team bus and interviews with Messi himself and football icon Gary Lineker.
The series will be mentioned ‘Messi‘World Championship: The Rise of a Legend’.