Texas A&M QB Marcel Reed Roasted for Giving Lionel Messi an Autographed Jersey
Marcel Reed gave Lionel Messi an autographed Texas A&M jersey on Friday night and the internet has not stopped laughing since. The Aggies quarterback now has a permanent place in social media history, just not the way he wanted.
Messi and the Argentina national team played Honduras in a friendly at Kyle Field in College Station, drawing more than 90,000 fans. After the 2-0 Argentina win, a Texas A&M official directed Messi to take a photo with Reed in the stadium tunnel.
Reed then handed Messi a maroon Aggies jersey with a personal inscription. The Texas A&M football account proudly posted the moment with the caption “Elite Company.”
Fans took one look and decided that no, this was not elite company. Messi has framed jerseys from Pele, Maradona, Ronaldo, and basically every soccer legend who has ever lived. Now there is a Marcel Reed jersey somewhere in the rotation.
“Just picturing all the iconic jerseys Messi probably has framed in his house. Pele, Maradona, Ronaldo. And now Marcel Reed,” one fan posted.
Another simply wrote, “Messi has 0 clue who Marcel Reed is.” That one might be true.
To be fair to Reed, this is not really on him. A college senior quarterback does not just walk up to Lionel Messi and decide he is going to hand over a personalized jersey unprompted. A Texas A&M staffer or athletic department PR person told him to do it, probably as a “respect” move that was not thought through.
The miss is in how the moment was packaged. If A&M had simply posted Reed meeting Messi and shaking his hand, nobody would have noticed. The jersey exchange flipped a meet-and-greet into something that looked like Reed putting himself on Messi’s level.
Reed had a solid 2025 season for the Aggies, throwing for over 2,500 yards and rushing for nearly 600 more. He is a real college player. The problem is that Messi is the most accomplished athlete in modern sports. The gulf between those resumes is the joke.
The eight-time Ballon d’Or winner has lived in the United States since 2023, when he signed with Inter Miami. So there is at least a non-zero chance Messi has caught an Aggies game on TV while he was relaxing in Fort Lauderdale. There is also a much, much larger chance he has not.
The jersey will probably end up gathering dust in a closet somewhere or get donated to charity. Or, on the off-chance Messi has a soft spot for college football, it ends up in a wall display next to actual legends.
Either way, Marcel Reed had one of the strangest media moments of any college quarterback in recent memory. He will not forget it. Messi probably already has.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
