Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami vs Real Salt Lake live updates: MLS opener team news, lineups and predictions

The video, posted on the pages of the South China Morning Post, was simple and inflammatory in its headline: “Why Hong Kong Hates Messi”.

There followed a monologue by the publication’s managing editor, Yonden Lhatoo, in which he chastised Lionel Messi, the Argentine World Cup winner and the prized asset of MLS team Inter Miami.

“All petulant in pink like some thuggish flamingo,” Lhatoo says of Messi, before adding: “Everyone looking at him might as well have been staring at a ballerina in a tutu.”

For Messi, this is one of the more flattering descriptions during a bewildering period in which he has found himself at the centre of geopolitical, cultural and sporting tensions cutting across Hong Kong, China, the United States, Japan and Argentina.