MidDays with Gerard Gibert 2026-07-13

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Get ready to go beyond the headlines and join a meaningful conversation with people from around the state. You're listening to MidDays with Gerard Gibert here on SuperTalk Mississippi.

**Gerard Gibert** (1:01)
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to MidDays, SuperTalk Mississippi. I'm your host, Gerard Gibert, along with Rhino in the Alamant Well Studio, guiding you through the middle of your day with Fax Fighter and Fine Music. Morning, Rhino.

**Rhino** (1:17)
Howdy, howdy.

**Gerard Gibert** (1:18)
All right, it's down to four in the World Cup. Down to four.

**Rhino** (1:24)
Yeah, on one side of the bracket, you got England and Argentina, and what a history they have both on and off the pitch. And then on the other side, you've got Spain. Yeah.
And I just went blank.

**Gerard Gibert** (1:41)
I can't remember either. I heard it this morning. France. France, that's right.

**Rhino** (1:45)
The team that has two teams, they could field and they'd both be just as good.

**Gerard Gibert** (1:50)
Incredible.

**Rhino** (1:51)
Yeah. So you've got, honestly, France and Spain, not going to be as interesting as you could tell, because I couldn't even remember the teams playing. There's only four.

**Gerard Gibert** (1:59)
Yeah.

**Rhino** (2:00)
Really focusing on that Argentina-England match, because they've had controversies at past World Cups, the most famous of which happened in Mexico in 86, where Maradona playing for Argentina has put two past them, and one of them was just blatant cheating, and the other is considered one of the goals of the century. So it's a wild history. Then if you look at off the pitch, in the early 80s, before I was even here, you had the Falklands War where they were fighting over an island off the coast of Argentina, or who controls it.
So yeah, that'll be interesting, with England finally seemingly coming together and playing as a team instead of having a truce from their club matches, and Argentina has Messi, so he can always make something magical happen.

**Gerard Gibert** (2:42)
I gotta tell the folks that I was in Lowe's a couple of weeks ago, and shopping there in the lawn and garden tools area, the grills area where they have all that stuff walking through there, actually, to the garden shop. And there's this gigantic blow up of Lionel Messi.
You know it's him. I mean, you can tell it's a soccer player dressed in a soccer uniform and, I think, holding a soccer ball. But I went around to the rear, sure enough, there's Messi's name.
On the jersey, on the back of the jersey, an exact replica. And I shot a photo of it. This was like on a Sunday morning. The writer said, I got your Christmas present for next year. Oh my gosh. He, I believe, the highest compensated professional athlete on the planet, correct?

**Rhino** (3:38)
If he's not, he has been in years past.

**Gerard Gibert** (3:41)
Oh yeah.

**Rhino** (3:43)
I know in, gosh, it's been two or three years ago now, I think it's three years ago now that he moved from European football to the MLS, and he plays at Inter Miami, the team owned by David Beckham.

**Gerard Gibert** (3:54)
Yeah.

**Rhino** (3:54)
Another world famous superstar in the world of soccer.
But Messi chose to come to America and to play in MLS, in America over what would have been a world record amount of money that was being thrown at him by the Saudi League. They wanted to give him a deal that was worth something like 500 million dollars a year.

**Gerard Gibert** (4:18)
Yeah.

**Rhino** (4:19)
He just said, no, I think I'd rather raise my kids in America.

**Gerard Gibert** (4:23)
I do remember that.
Well, just taking a look at the latest, at his guaranteed compensa- at base salary of 25 million, guaranteed compensation of 28 million. But I didn't know he had these revenue sharing agreements with the companies that he endorses. Apple and Adidas specifically are big time. Well, his annual compensation, ESPN reports between 70 and 140 million. That seems like a big delta. But that's a bunch. Incredible.

**Rhino** (5:04)
Yeah, I want to say technically, it's Ronaldo from Portugal that's the highest paid in the world, but he plays in the Saudi League, and they just throw money at the stars.

**Gerard Gibert** (5:16)
Yeah. Well, the big news over the weekend, of course, the rather abrupt passing of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, it has now been revealed that he died of an aortic dissection. I'm not exactly sure what that is, but I know that is cardiovascular disease and related to the heart.