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FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA – SEPTEMBER 14: Lionel Messi #10 of Inter Miami celebrates after scoring a goal against the Philadelphia Union during the first half of the game at Chase Stadium on September 14, 2024 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. (Photo by Megan Briggs/Getty Images)
The planning began when "Lionel Messi to Inter Miami" was still just a dream, an internet rumor discredited by insiders but sustained by a billionaire’s belief.
In the fall of 2022, as MLS clubs set out to build their 2023 rosters, Jorge Mas, Inter’s managing owner, was scheming. He’d been courting Messi since 2019, forging relationships with Messi’s entourage, planting seeds. By Year 4 of the pursuit, he was in Messi’s suite at the World Cup final, and "consistent in his confidence that this is gonna happen," Inter Miami sporting director Chris Henderson said.
So, as chief soccer officers around the league were chasing stars in early 2023, and filling salary cap space to improve their teams, Miami… wasn’t. Some of its offseason moves puzzled observers, Designated Players left and weren’t really replaced. Pundits glanced at the remains, and (correctly) predicted Inter would sink from sixth place in 2022 toward the bottom of the Eastern Conference in 2023.
But, "you know," Henderson said, "we had a plan."
They were saving and making room for Messi — but also for a dozen other players who’d supplement the GOAT, and who, a year later, would propel Inter Miami to perhaps the greatest MLS season ever.
With Decision Day near, they stand on the rim of history, two points shy of the regular-season points record with one game to go. If they win it — on Saturday at home vs. New England (6:07 p.m. ET, AppleTV+) — they’ll finish on 74 points, an unprecedented haul in a league whose restrictive rules usually produce parity.
And if they do, Messi will be the primary reason. Equally remarkable and influential, though, is their record without him. The Herons took 32 points from 15 matches with Messi absent — or 2.13 points per game, nearly identical to their average in the 18 matches Messi has played.
They’ve been the league’s top team, with and without the GOAT, because they executed the plan, and assembled a peerless roster. It was a years-long process that required collaboration between ownership, executives, and coaches, plus at least six other departments within the club.
And, of course, it required Messi, whose god-like pull made recruitment "much easier," Henderson told Yahoo Sports in a phone interview.
Once Messi committed to Miami, up popped dozens of international players who, as Henderson says, "just want[ed] to come and play with him."
Miami makes room for Messi
The process dates to 2021, when Henderson, an MLS lifer, took charge of Inter’s sporting department after 13 years in Seattle.
It accelerated in 2022 and 2023, as the end of Messi’s contract with Paris Saint-Germain neared. The possibility of luring him to Miami "affected all of our thought process in building and planning the team," Henderson said. Messi had options — including PSG, Barcelona, and Saudi Arabia — but Inter had only one: to construct a squad with a Messi-sized hole, one that could, in the dream scenario, be transformed almost overnight.
That meant, for example, acquiring Spanish playmaker Alejandro Pozuelo in July 2022, then letting his contract expire to free up a Designated Player (DP) slot. (Each MLS club is permitted to pay three DPs an uncapped salary that, no matter how lucrative, only counts $683,750 toward the cap.)
Miami was still, in many ways, hindered by MLS rules, which are more financially restrictive than those of any other major men’s sports league, and more so than other soccer leagues around the globe. They limit the American league’s ability to attract or afford players like Gomez, or 20-year-old Argentine attacker Facundo Farías, or teenage Argentine defender Tomás Avilés, or 21-year-old Argentine midfielder Federico Redondo, among the highest-rated youngsters in South America.
Miami, however, had a pitch that no other MLS club ever had: Messi.
"I think it would’ve been harder to get Redondo [without Messi],” Henderson acknowledges. “Having a chance to play with Leo Messi really helped in that. … I can name like seven guys, 10 guys [on Inter’s current roster] who came to Miami in part because they wanted to play with Messi."
And there were many more worldwide. The sporting department’s task was to suss out which ones would come to work; and which ones, on the other hand, might come as fanboys.
For a few months after Messi’s arrival in Florida, Inter Miami lifted its first trophy in August 2023 with a win in the Leagues Cup final.
Inter Miami’s rebuild drives historic season
As Inter Miami’s architects were clearing space for more than a dozen new players — by buying out a backup goalkeeper and striker, transferring Gregore and midfielder Jean Mota, and trading three defenders, including Miller and former captain DeAndre Yedlin — Inter Miami’s architects were vetting their targets. There were calls to acquaintances and family members, coaches and teammates and the players themselves.
Some key questions, Henderson says, were: "Do they have the character to step on the field, and train, and play, with some of the greatest players who ever played? … Are they gonna be fans out there, or are they gonna actually come and make an impact?"
"You need to have a character that’s strong enough," he adds, "and be able to stand on your own two feet, when one of the older players is getting on you because you lost the ball with no pressure."
There were also cultural considerations. Adjusting to a new league and foreign country as a teen or young adult can be difficult. But Miami is bubbling with Latin influence; and Inter’s coaching staff and key players communicate almost exclusively in Spanish. That, for the dozen Hispanic players who’ve followed Messi to Miami, has helped ease the transition.
So, too, have the professionalism and leadership of Messi, Busquets, Suarez, and Alba. "They come into training," Henderson says, "and they don’t want to waste time, they want to get out and work hard."
The result has been a season for the ages. After a rocky start, the Herons are 18W-6D-2L since the start of April. They won eight of nine MLS games while Messi was away at the Copa América, then injured. They clinched the Supporters’ Shield, the regular-season title, with a win at defending champion Columbus earlier this month. Next up, before the playoffs, is the final lap of a run at history.
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