Both Messi and Luis Suárez needed to move past the sidelines. Both of them decided to form Deportivo LSM, a new soccer club in Uruguay that begins with a strange quirk: it shares the same initial letters of the top players from South America over the past decade or so.
Suárez broke the news in a social media film. It is a big bet, a sporting and symbolic gesture, that turns stars into builders of a thought. Messi joins him as a partner. Suárez makes the first move. The club will start life in Division D of Uruguay, the fourth tier in the country. It is not big, per se, but the importance is massive.
Most importantly, it is not that those two superstars are united. That has been done. The surprise is how they are doing it: not under flashy lights, not through bombast of rhetoric, and not by prioritizing the making of promises. A solid club of substance, form, and ambition.
Miami to Montevideo, the connection turned into a project
Together again on the field, Messi and Suárez are at Inter Miami in the MLS, but the friendship that unites them is greater than the contemporary. Barcelona buddies, the duo continues to share the field, concepts, and now a future project of South American soccer. Suárez was working on the project back in 2022. It is only now that he decided to share the project with the world and to his former Argentine teammate.
Deportivo LS was the original name of the club, a direct reference to Suárez's initials. The acronym was changed to Deportivo LSM after Messi arrived. A simple but symbolic name. The partnership is in the spotlight and has a place to call home too: Ciudad de la Costa, a Montevideo metropolitan area. That is where the things start shaping and gaining momentum.
Formal initiation with structure and fixed calendar
It already has a sports complex, Complexo LS, inaugurated in 2022, that contains training pitches, locker rooms, and support rooms. It is also developing the LS Sports City, a full center with a stadium, backup fields, and structures that are used to play other sports. The squad will begin to compete under the official AUF system and ought to participate in youth competitions and Division D.
Although the soccer club is Uruguayan soccer, the presence of not one, but two players with careers as internationals lends the project greater scope. Although the sports goals are regional, interest from the public and the media is already extending Deportivo LSM internationally.