Lionel Messi’s second goal against Columbus on Wednesday was this free kick late in the first half. (Photo by Jason Morley/Getty Images)
Inter Miami won the Major League Soccer regular season title on Wednesday. The main reason for their dominance was, of course, Lionel Messi.
As head coach Tata Martino recently said, Messi transformed Miami from “a team that keeps losing for years” to “a team that keeps winning” and perhaps the best MLS team of all time.
He scored two goals out of the blue on Wednesday, contributing to a win over reigning MLS champions Columbus Crew. The first match unshackled a tight, choppy game. The second one, five minutes later, was a trademark free-kick that stunned Crewe and the packed crowd.
“He had one and a half chances,” Crew coach Wilfried Nancy later said, “and he scored two.”
These were Messi’s 16th and 17th goals in 17 games of the MLS season. It stunned the league’s best defense. They defeated Miami 3-2 and moved into first place by 10 points. It’s a gap that neither the Crew, FC Cincinnati nor LA Galaxy will be able to close in the final two weeks of the season.
Miami thus won the Supporters’ Shield, the trophy given to the best team throughout the MLS regular season. It’s not the league’s main award, it’s the MLS Cup, which goes to the playoff winners. But it’s still a prize.
This is also Messi’s second trophy with Miami and the 46th trophy in his unprecedented career, more than any other player has won in the history of professional football. .
Ironically, this is one of the 2024 trophies that Inter were not expected to win. Of the 14 experts surveyed by the league’s official website before the season, only two had Miami as the favorite to win.
Their reasoning was simple and understandable. Messi will likely miss more than a dozen games. His former Barcelona teammates, especially Luis Suarez, will be well rested as well. They will save their aging legs for the playoffs and will definitely get there. The regular season felt secondary and the Shield seemed unattainable.
What these predictions didn’t take into account was that Miami was building a team that could win without Messi and was attracting him.
In fact, this season the Herons have scored more points per game in MLS without the legend (2.13) than with the legend (2.11).
To be honest, they are much better than Messi. In the games he didn’t play, the goal difference would be 15 goals worse. The expected goal difference without Messi is negative.
However, without Messi, they missed out on victory time and time again. The GOAT played for the Argentina national team in the Copa America, and although he was sidelined with an ankle injury in the final, he won eight of nine matches, six of them by the same score of 2-1. In September, after a three-month absence, Messi returned to a team that had a seven-point lead over the chasing pack.
Miami won in part because athletic director Chris Henderson and his staff worked salary cap magic. More than a dozen new players were added from July 2023 to July 2024. They surrounded Messi, Suarez, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba with the likes of Federico Redondo, Diego Gomez, Tomás Avilés and Julian Gressel.
And they kept goalie Drake Callender, who sealed the Shield with a penalty save in the 83rd minute of Wednesday’s hard-fought game.
Messi scored twice just before halftime. Columbus got a goal back right after the break. Two minutes later, Suarez scored.
Crew forward Cucho Hernandez then scored from the penalty spot in the 61st minute, cutting the lead to 3-2. After a few minutes, Columbus was down to 10 men, but Miami still kept them at bay. Crews threatened before and after Callender’s penalty save. Miami’s shaky defense wobbled.
However, Inter held on, securing the top seed in the Eastern Conference and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.
