David Beckham attended Inter Miami’s morning training session on Monday as the ex-England captain keeps a close eye on superstar Lionel Messi, embracing with the Argentine ahead of the latter’s second game with his new team tomorrow night.

Messi reported to Florida Blue Training Center next to DRV PNK Stadium in Fort  Lauderdale, to be put through his paces in front of Miami manager Tata Martino.

The World Cup champion was involved in conditioning and on the ball drills with his teammates, as Beckham, 48, sat on a red cooler, wearing a black outfit and sneakers with white socks and pink Inter Miami cap.

Messi marked his Inter Miami in style last week with a stunning free kick goal in stoppage time against La Liga MX side Cruz Azul in the Leagues Cup.

The Herons face MLS rivals Atlanta United in their second group stage game of the competition on Tuesday at home.

On Sunday, MLS commissioner Don Garber pointed out that Messi’s arrival in the US underlines the league’s ‘unending ambition’, perhaps meaning that one day the best players on the planet will move to North America at 26 rather than 36.

‘I think you need to start with getting the best of all time choose us now,’ he said when that potential change was put to him.

‘What will that look like in the years to come and perhaps it will because I think the perception of Major League Soccer is going to change dramatically over the next number of years.

‘I think our own ambition is going to change as we all see how all of this plays out.

‘But I think because there are a handful of really big names who come at the end of their career, everyone has this label that they put on.’

‘I mean, David Beckham was 31. He went to Milan and PSG after,’ Garber, who’s been MLS commissioner since 1999, added. ‘Yet nobody was saying to Zlatan when he left LA and then he played for Milan for two years and was leading scorer for a while that AC Milan is a retirement club.’

Garber also takes great pride in the fact that Messi, who he called ‘the best player in the history of the game made MLS his league of choice’ when he could have gone anywhere, including Saudi Arabia or a return to Barcelona.

But now, after Pele’s move to the New York Cosmos in 1975, MLS kicking off in 1996 and David Beckham’s 2007 switch to the LA Galaxy, Garber will hope for the rise of soccer to keep growing to the point where it could challenge the big three of US sports: American football, basketball and baseball.

‘MLS has been on this sort of rocket ship for a while,’ said Garber. Every day that you think they don’t maybe there’s a quiet period and you can settle in, something else happens that gives you even more momentum, more energy and more sort of optimism about where things are going.

‘I think the time is going to come where these great things become expected, special moments are going to be expected and it’s not going to be ”boy, is this the most special time in the history of the league?”’

Global star Messi’s move to Miami comes just seven months after lifting the World Cup with Argentina in Qatar, sending ripples across the footballing world.