Messi makes it possible
Star has changed everything for Inter Miami
FORT LAUDERDALE — Former soccer player and renowned broadcaster Ray Hudson calls the surreal notion of Lionel Messi actually playing for Inter Miami “Stunning. Fantasyland.” The fantasy continues, two games into this epic of epochs. The seeing … but still hardly believing. Messi’s dramatic, last-second winning free-kick goal in his debut off the bench Friday night? Quite a hello.
The man sure can deliver an encore, too.
Two more goals from Messi in his first start since coming to America led Tuesday night’s 4-0 Leagues Cup victory over fellow Major League Soccer team Atlanta United, the chanting of his name again ringing across an again sold-out DRV PNK Stadium in Fort Lauderdale. Messi’s footprints also were on both other goals, each by Robert Taylor. And his chemistry with former Barcelona teammate Sergio Busquets was a masterclass.
Miami had the worst record in all of MLS, pre-Messi. This is not that team anymore. Not close. All that has changed is … everything. Messi’s pitch-IQ remains pitch-perfect at age 36. He knows when to pause, when to pounce. His curling, turf-hugging through passes are artwork.
Atlanta coach Gonzalo Pineda afterward called Messi “a maestro” and “extraordinario.”
By his own call Messi left for a substitute in the 78th minute with his customary above-head hand clap, to a standing ovation.
Many in the crowd left with him. When a reporter tried to gin up a controversy of that, Miami coach Tata Martino said, “It’s justified by the public that this happens.”
Messi’s encore was signifi
cant because it was his first start and first game vs. an MLS team, and it advanced Miami from the Leagues Cup group stage to the knockout Round of 32. Miami still must prevail now in five mustwins in a row to win the Cup starting next week back at home.
Anybody doubting the possibility now? Not anyone who has seen Messi’s first two games.
Messi’s immediate impact for Inter Miami has been beyond enormous and beyond all doubt.
Instantly, the fourthyear club with the worst record in the league is the biggest thing in MLS. Instantly, the league and the sport in America are elevated in stature, worldwide. Instantly, Inter Miami’s franchise value, merchandise sales, social-media reach — all the measurable stuff — are through the roof.
And, instantly, the tickets you once had trouble giving away may now be sold at great profit … except you hate to sell, because you would miss seeing the futbol deity Messi in person.
Apple TV lead MLS analyst Taylor Twellman said Inter Miami in landing Messi “pulled off the greatest heist in sports history.” He may be right. Although in this case the heist was not the nefarious bank robbery kind but a legal steal born of club perseverance, the willingness of MLS and partners like Apple to help financially, and, as big as anything, Messi and family loving Miami, where they already owned a lavish oceanfront condo.
Two games into this fabulous “heist” and with at least two full seasons to follow, the reality of Miami actually having Messi hasn’t sunk in yet. We think we just hit the Powerball, but we are re-checking the ticket a dozen times to be sure.
Two games in, we know what having Messi feels like, but there is one question still to answer in measuring how grand the scale of Messi in Miami will become:
Can he win here?
Is this two-game sample sustainable or an unrealistic tease? How high can he lift his team?
LeBron James in four Heat seasons helped reach four NBA Finals and win two championships, but joined a franchise that had already won.
Now, can the player who has lifted a World Cup trophy, seven Ballon d’Ors and all of South Florida lift a franchise that had never won anything of any note beyond David Beckham’s involvement before it somehow won Messi?
It won’t take two more years to find out. It might take just two more months to have a good idea.
Three prizes in play — the Leagues Cup, the U.S. Open Cup and, of course, the balance of the MLS season — are there to be won for Inter Miami. Can Messi make it happen?
We are at the beginning of finding out. The world is…
Leagues Cup: Every team from MLS and Mexico’s LIGA MX is playing the third iteration of the annual regional bragging-rights tournament, and Mexican teams have won the first two. Five more wins in a row is a tall ask.
U.S. Open Cup: America’s oldest soccer trophy, in an all-comers tournament 110 years old, is the hardware closest to Messi’s grasp, because Miami already has reached the Aug. 23 semifinal without him, facing fellow MLS club Cincinnati in Ohio. The championship is Sept. 27. Miami has never won, although South Florida’s first and short-lived foray into MLS, the Miami Fusion then coached by the very same Ray Hudson, reached the 2000 U.S. Cup Open final before losing.
It would sting if Inter Miami, with Messi, cannot win this trophy.
MLS: Messi inherits a team that has the worst record in the league, has not won in 11 straight league matches, and is 12 points off playoff pace with 12 league games to play.
Math and logic calls that impossible. And it would have been, once.
But now Lionel Messi plays for Inter Miami.