Fireworks lit up the roof of Inter Miami’s Chase Stadium on Saturday night (9), but there was nothing for the home team to celebrate.
When the final whistle sounded, Inter Miami had been defeated 3-2 by ninth-placed Atlanta United and eliminated from the MLS playoffs. Atlanta won the decisive Game 3 of the series and advanced to the Eastern Conference semifinals.
The pyrotechnics were a strange way to end a successful season for Lionel Messi’s club. Wait. How can Inter Miami’s 2024 campaign be considered a success?
Exiting at this stage of the playoffs is an embarrassment for a team whose notoriety has skyrocketed since Messi’s arrival in July 2023. In a temporary stadium that has become a fortress for Miami this year, Messi and his teammates were eliminated by an opponent who was mediocre for most of the season.
After setting the MLS regular season points record (74) and earning the Supporters’ Shield, awarded to the club with the best performance in the regular season, Miami was, in the minds of many, forced to win the MLS Cup Final in the end. of the playoffs on December 7th. So what went wrong? And what does this elimination mean for Messi, 37, and Miami coach Gerardo Martino?
Argentine Martino, 61, was forced to change his lineup at the most inopportune moment of the season. The ever-reliable Sergio Busquets, suffering from a chest injury, was benched, and Yannick Bright, a ball-recovering midfielder with refined possession skills, was unavailable due to a muscle injury suffered in Game 2 in Atlanta.
Messi stood out on Saturday, orchestrating the game’s first goal (scored by Matias Rojas) and, after Atlanta took a 2-1 lead, scoring the equalizer himself. But the visitors’ winning goal came when midfielder Bartosz Slisz, with a powerful header, stunned the Chase Stadium fans with 14 minutes remaining.
Miami scored 79 goals during the regular season and routinely dominated possession, but its weaknesses were also there for all to see. Atlanta exposed Miami’s high line throughout the series and finished their chances in clinical fashion. Despite their success in the regular season, Martino’s team were always susceptible to counter-attacks, and this vulnerability after losing possession cost them dearly.
Miami’s ownership group, formed by David Beckham and brothers Jorge and Jose Mas, spent more than US$70 million (R$406 million) on signings for the team, pushing the MLS salary cap rule to its limit. Messi, Busquets, Luis Suárez and Jordi Alba brought their spectacular CVs to MLS with one thing in mind: winning titles. A Leagues Cup trophy in 2023 set the stage for a fairytale season.
With Martino at the helm, a coach accustomed to the brightest spotlight in world soccer after leading Barcelona and the Argentine and Mexican national teams, Miami had all the tools, including home field advantage, to win its first MLS Cup. Leave so soon is a worse-case scenario for MLS and Apple, the league’s broadcast partner.
“It’s not a success when you lose at the quarterfinal stage,” Martino said. “If we think about where we were last November, there was progress for the club, not just the team. If we consider the expectations we had for these playoffs, we fell far short.”
An MLS Cup will never define Messi’s legacy — nothing he does while in Miami’s pink and black uniform will harm or enhance the career of the sport’s greatest player. As Beckham said in 2023, Inter Miami were successful when they signed Messi.
Messi, winner of eight Ballon d’Ors and World Cup hero for Argentina’s triumphant side in 2022, is also playing in MLS for reasons that go far beyond the pitch. Miami hired him to change the trajectory of American football, to become an icon in a country that still turns its back on the global game.
Internationally, the Inter Miami project was a resounding success, but in the United States, the Messi phenomenon was normalized. It was almost unbelievable to suggest he would ever come to MLS. Now, after just 1.5 seasons, MLS fans are complaining about Messi fatigue.
He has been an exemplary teammate and a joy to watch, but his reluctance to speak to the press has diminished his impact in the United States. When Messi speaks, the world listens. When he doesn’t engage with the press in a country whose media landscape is dominated by sports debate shows that discuss everything but football, the silence, as they say, can be deafening.
At the end of October, in an interview with journalist Fabrizio Romano, Messi said that his desired superpower would be invisibility. One can empathize with someone whose life has been anything but private for more than 20 years. In Fort Lauderdale, thousands of miles from the football paparazzi who followed him for years in Barcelona and Paris after his move to Paris St.-Germain, Messi has as normal a life as he has ever had. But MLS cannot afford for him to go unnoticed in the United States.
This playoff loss against Atlanta proved that great moments can be fleeting. It is no secret that Messi, who will turn 38 in June, is approaching the end of his illustrious career. He did not rule out playing in the 2026 World Cup, which will be held in the United States, Mexico and Canada. Messi’s contract with Inter Miami runs until the 2025 MLS season, a year before this World Cup and a year before the opening of the club’s new stadium in Miami.
With that in mind, Miami’s early exit puts additional pressure on the club’s owners to maximize Messi’s talent and massive brand appeal. Time, apparently, is running out.
The MLS playoffs will continue without Messi, and for a league that needs as much attention as possible, Saturday’s result in Fort Lauderdale was underwhelming.
But this is football in America. There is still a long way to go towards relevance.
