Messi Wins MLS Golden Boot for a Second Straight Season
Lionel Messi has won the MLS Golden Boot in consecutive seasons, the first player in the league's history to do so. The award goes to the top goalscorer in Major League Soccer, the professional league in the United States and Canada. Messi's Inter Miami confirmed the milestone, and the win was reported on 7 November.
Messi scored 26 goals in 31 appearances. He finished four goals ahead of FC Dallas striker Peter Musa and five ahead of Nashville forward Sam Surridge. He also set up 17 assists, and his 43 goal contributions (goals plus assists, a common way to measure how much a player adds to his team's attack) were the best in the league for the second year running.
Messi is only the sixth player to win the Golden Boot twice. Among the earlier two-time winners is Bradley Wright-Phillips, who played for Charlton Athletic and Southampton before his time in America. Messi also became only the second player in MLS history to score at least 25 goals in consecutive seasons. He scored 29 goals in 2025.
The race was not settled until late in the year. Messi had 25 goals in 27 appearances at one stage and led the chase for most of 2026. Rivals kept close enough that his final margin of four and five goals took some work to build.
Messi's year also stretched beyond the scoring charts. He finished 2026 as the number one seller of MLS jerseys for the fourth season in a row, according to MLS. He has also won the Landon Donovan MVP award, the league's most valuable player honour, twice. He took it in 2024, when Inter Miami won the Supporters' Shield for the best regular-season record, and again in 2025, when the club lifted the MLS Cup, the league's championship trophy.
This season, though, the team's league table tells a harder story. Inter Miami finished 17 points behind Nashville in the Eastern Conference. The club now faces Columbus Crew over three games in the first round of the MLS Cup play-offs, the knockout stage that decides the championship.
For the neutral observer, the appeal is simple. A player who has scored at this rate for two straight seasons is rare in any league, and the Golden Boot race has been decided by goals scored on real pitches, across real travel, in front of crowds from Miami to Nashville. The play-offs will test whether those individual numbers can be turned into team silverware.
