Messi stars in Super Bowl ad with Dan Marino, Jason Sudeikis

The 2024 Super Bowl is not missing for storylines and burning questions. Can Patrick Mahomes win his third ring? Will the San Francisco 49ers spoil the celebration for the Kansas City Chiefs? What’s the over/underneath on what number of instances Taylor Swift will likely be proven or referenced? What’s Lionel Messi doing in this business?

Well, we already know the reply to that final one: the Inter Miami star is partnering with Michelob Ultra.

– Stream on ESPN+: LaLiga, Bundesliga, extra (U.S.)

After transferring to MLS final summer time, Messi is making his Super Bowl debut as a part of his prolonged welcome tour in the United States, with Michelob making the most of the “football meets football” connection in its business. Because while you’ve received the largest American soccer stars taking part in in the largest sport of the yr, you may at all times one-up them with a extra widespread sport.

That being mentioned, Messi’s not by himself to promote the American public on soccer. Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Marino bridges the sporting hole as a extra acquainted face for the American soccer crowd and returns Messi’s ball to him after the Inter Miami man sends it on to the retired Miami Dolphins legend’s yacht. The two males have each represented Miami groups, in spite of everything. Why Marino was chosen and never a present Dolphins star is a little bit of a thriller, however most likely for the perfect after a late-season collapse left them behind the Buffalo Bills — once more.

But instantly, the stability of the business has shifted a bit. There’s Marino and the Super Bowl, a connection that makes a number of sense, after which there’s Messi, extra tenuously linked. The business could be very American soccer and never as a lot fútbol anymore. We want type of a go-between, somebody that may actually tie this all collectively.

Jason Sudeikis. We want Jason Sudeikis.

At least, that is how we image this all got here collectively in a writers’ room someplace in the ice-cold, refreshing headquarters of Michelob. For higher or worse, Sudeikis would possibly simply be essentially the most recognizable American soccer determine there’s because of “Ted Lasso,” and the foolish parallel of a goofy American soccer coach taking the reins at a Premier League membership completes the business’s triumvirate of star energy. Perhaps for the perfect, he is the one one which retains his athletic potential to himself.

Seeing commercials for American corporations utilizing worldwide soccer superstars was once humorous. There was one thing endearingly awkward and out-of-place about them, and perhaps at one level many American soccer followers might relate to having to elucidate to their shut relations how the particular person on their display was really 10 instances extra well-known than Derek Jeter. Those days are gone. The overwhelming majority of Americans in the present day have Messi and a handful of different soccer stars in their psychological Rolodex.

Maybe the funniest factor about Michelob’s Super Bowl business is the way it really manages to chop that awkwardness down by simply letting Messi do the one factor it appears he ever actually needs to do: play the sport. After a quick snafu with a kicked keg, the rest of the business is simply him dribbling round, over and thru crowds of individuals on a seashore.

It’s an ad in retaining with different well-known soccer commercials, such because the Brazil nationwide crew’s iconic kickabout in the airport in 1998 (directed by motion film legend John Woo) or Pepsi’s own “Nutmeg Royale” ad with Messi for 2022’s World Cup.

This newest manufacturing is a little bit bit lighter on the motion in comparison with these commercials, however you may see the advertising lineage from which this Michelob ad hails. And with the model because the official beer sponsor of the 2024 Copa America in the U.S., followers is likely to be in retailer for extra forward of this summer time’s event.

The smartest thing concerning the ad is that it merely lets Messi do the factor he is greatest at. It does not ask him to behave, probably not. It does not request he throw himself headlong into the advertising circus so many American athletes be taught and excel at. Instead, the ad places a ball at his toes and asks him to make some magic occur.

And very similar to on an actual soccer discipline, it is tough to fail while you give the ball to Messi and inform him to run with it.