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 ever 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 says.
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 that Inter would sink from sixth place in 2022 toward the bottom of the Eastern Conference in 2023.
But, “you know,” Henderson says now, “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, as Inter is nicknamed, 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…