FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The show that was supposed to be Lionel Messi’s became a showcase for one of Major League Soccer’s other hottest teams.
Some 20,000 fans came to DRV PNK Stadium on Wednesday to see one man. They wore his famous name and No. 10 across Inter Miami jerseys, and across Barcelona, Argentina and PSG shirts. They came from far and wide, and paid lucrative sums, to witness greatness.
Instead, Messi joined them in a stadium seat. And the Houston Dynamo won the 2023 U.S. Open Cup final, 2-1.
Messi had been dealing with a mysterious injury, something related to “scar tissue” and “fatigue.” Still, many of the 20,000 who descended on Fort Lauderdale, who queued outside stadium gates hours before kickoff, expected him to have a go at a second American trophy. Even Houston Dynamo head coach Ben Olsen did. “We’re pretty sure he’ll play,” Olsen said Monday.
But when they gathered at the southwest corner of this bare-bones stadium to welcome the Inter Miami bus, and craned their necks to glimpse their hero, he never appeared.
When lineups were released and word spread slowly, via smartphones, through a buzzing concourse, the mood seemed to dampen.
When 22 players paraded onto the field a little before 8:30, in Section 131, a young kid scanned the 11 in pink jerseys, and asked with a hint of concern: “Where’s Messi?”
“Messi no juega,” a teenager one row down told him. Messi isn’t playing. The younger kid’s eyebrows rose in shock.
Both wore Messi jerseys. So did thousands of others inside the ground, where a variety of similar interactions surely occurred. Fears over Messi’s fitness had clouded the buildup to the final. The conventional wisdom, though, was that Messi would at least come on as a substitute, if needed in the second half.
He instead arrived in all-black street clothes, not even on the bench, and settled into the type of seat typically reserved for celebrities who’ve come to watch him.
Many of the 20,000 eventually turned their attention to the game, and…