Inter Miami clinched the Major League Soccer regular season title on Wednesday and the main reason for their supremacy was and is of course Lionel Messi.
Messi has transformed Miami from “a team that habitually lost for years,” as head coach Tata Martino recently said, to “a team that habitually wins,” and perhaps the best MLS team ever.
He helped beat the Columbus Crew, the reigning MLS champions, on Wednesday with two goals from nowhere. The first unleashed a tight, choppy game. The second, a trademark free-kick five minutes later, stunned the Crew and left a sell-out crowd in awe.
They were Messi’s 16th and 17th goals of the MLS season – in his 17th game. They left the league’s best defense in a daze. They took Miami to a 3-2 win and a 10-point lead at the top of the table – a gap that neither the Crew, FC Cincinnati nor the LA Galaxy will be able to close in the final two weeks of the season.
Miami therefore won the Supporters’ Shield, the trophy that goes to the best team during the regular MLS season. It’s not the league’s top prize, that’s the MLS Cup, which goes to the winner of the playoffs. But it’s a prize nonetheless.
It is Messi’s second trophy in Miami, and the 46th of his unprecedented career – more than any other player in the history of professional football has ever won.
Ironically, it is the one trophy of 2024 that Inter would be reluctant to win. Before the season, only two of fourteen experts polled by the league’s official website picked Miami to win it.
Their reasoning was simple and understandable: Messi would probably miss a dozen games. His former Barcelona teammates – especially Luis Suarez – would also get plenty of rest. They would preserve their aging legs for the playoffs, which they would undoubtedly reach. The regular season felt secondary and the Shield didn’t seem feasible.
What those predictions didn’t take into account was that Miami had built a team and that Messi had signed a team that could win without him.
Without their legend (2.13), the Herons have actually taken more points per MLS game this season than with him (2.11).
To be clear, they are much better of Messi. Their goal difference is fifteen times worse in matches he did not play. Their expected goal difference without Messi is negative.
But they achieved victories again and again in Messi’s absence. While the GOAT was with the Argentina national team for the Copa América, and was subsequently sidelined by an ankle injury suffered in the final, they won eight of nine matches – six with identical 2-1 scores. In September, after a three-month absence, Messi returned to a team that was seven points ahead of the chasers.
Miami was clear in part because athletic director Chris Henderson and his staff were working on salary caps. They added more than a dozen new players between July 2023 and July 2024. They surrounded Messi, Suarez, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba with Federico Redondo, and Diego Gomez, and Tomas Aviles, and Julian Gressel, and others.
And they kept goalkeeper Drake Callender, who sealed the Shield with a penalty save in the 83rd minute of Wednesday’s wild match.
Messi scored twice just before halftime. Columbus got a goal back shortly after halftime. Suarez scored two minutes later.
Crew striker Cucho Hernandez then converted from the penalty spot in the 61st to cut the lead to 3-2. A few minutes later, Columbus was down to ten men, but Miami still couldn’t keep them at bay. Before and after Callender’s penalty save, the Crew threatened. A shaky defense faltered. But Miami held on, securing the top seed in the Eastern Conference and home field advantage throughout the playoffs.
