FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.>> Best player. Best team. Inter Miami’s Lionel Messi is the unquestioned force in Major League Soccer right now, on a run like nobody else the league has ever seen.

The 38-year-old Argentine star — and captain of the MLS Cup champions — has become the first back-to-back MVP in MLS history, getting announced Tuesday as this year’s winner of the league’s top individual honor.

Messi — thanking his teammates and saying he couldn’t have won the award without them — accepted the trophy at the opening ceremony of his Messi Cup youth tournament, which kicked off Tuesday. That’s why the award announcement was delayed until after the season; Messi wanted kids to be part of it.

“He’s a unicorn, man — not just for what he does on the field,” MLS Commissioner Don Garber said Tuesday after the on-field ceremony in misty conditions. “He’s just a special man.”

The back-to-back MVPs represent another first for Messi in what seems like a never-ending list of his career accomplishments and was widely expected, almost assumed after he had a league-best 29 goals along with 19 assists during the regular season.

He also becomes just the second two-time MVP the league has ever seen, joining Preki, the winner of the award in 1997 and 2003. The other winners are all one-time MVP recipients.

“He was fantastic the whole season, with the numbers and also with the commitment,” Inter Miami coach and longtime Messi teammate Javier Mascherano said after Saturday’s MLS final.

Messi played in barely half of Inter Miami’s regular-season games in 2024, and that sparked some doubt as to whether he deserved to win the MVP award.

He won a close vote last year. This year, there was no debate.

Messi got 70.4% of the total vote — the biggest winning total since Toronto’s Sebastian Giovinco in 2015. San Diego’s Anders Dreyer was second with 11.2%, followed by LAFC’s Denis Bouanga (7.3%), Cincinnati’s Evander (4.8%) and Nashville’s Sam Surridge (2.4%).

“There’s something about the way he’s wired,” Garber said of Messi while attending an Inter Miami match earlier in this season’s playoffs. “He’s thinking about the game like nobody else ever has. His intensity and desire to win is what makes him the greatest of all time. There are a lot of really competitive players, but he has this special sauce, this dynamic that has him so focused on doing what he needs to do to win games.”

This award joins dozens of other individual honors in Messi’s career, including eight Ballon d’Or titles, eight Pichichi trophies as La Liga’s top scorer, six La Liga best player nods, three Best FIFA Men’s Player awards, three UEFA Men’s Player of the Year wins, two FIFA World Cup Golden Balls and no fewer than 15 selections as Argentina’s best player in a given year. He’s also been part of winning 47 trophies for club and country — including the 2022 World Cup — making him the most decorated player in the men’s game.

Messi becomes the sixth player in MLS history to win MVP and a championship in the same season.

“Leo is a winner. It’s simple as that,” Inter Miami co-owner David Beckham said. “And I know that sounds like an easy and an obvious thing to say because of what he’s won. There’s no player that has probably won what he has won and done it the way he’s done it. There’s more to what makes him the greatest than just what he does on the field. I think everyone in Miami, everyone around the MLS, has seen what he’s done for this league and this city and this country. But he continues to raise that level, and that’s what great players do.”