NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Major League Soccer didn’t have to wait long for its cherished Lionel Messi moment.
On Saturday night in front of a packed crowd at Geodis Park, Inter Miami won the Leagues Cup, prevailing over Nashville SC via penalties 10-9 after the teams finished 90 minutes tied at one goal apiece. At that point, the celebrations began.
Inter Miami co-owner David Beckham — who’d endured an odyssey just to get the team in Miami — was hugging everyone in sight. That included defender Ian Fray, who had torn his ACL for the third time just minutes into Messi’s first match against Cruz Azul in July.
Later, Messi sauntered over to the awards stand, and after receiving a peck on the cheek from co-owner Jorge Mas — the man who had engineered the Argentine’s move stateside — he took home the tournament MVP trophy. He scored 10 goals in the competition, including Miami’s tally on this night. He later called over DeAndre Yedlin, and the two held up the absurdly large Leagues Cup; the confetti rained down, the players started dancing and the party was on. It later spilled over into manager Gerardo “Tata” Martino’s postgame news conference, with players bursting in and dousing him in champagne.
“It was a very difficult game,” Beckham said. “But it was just our night tonight.”
As much as the whole idea of the Leagues Cup has been criticized (expanded this year to include all 47 Liga MX and MLS teams), it meant a ton to Inter Miami. A month ago, with the team having the fewest points in all of MLS, it seemed debatable as to whether one player — or even three of them — could turn Miami’s fortunes around. But after seven victories, including two by penalty shootout, the Herons have raised a trophy for the first time in their history.
To put into context just how rapid Inter Miami’s ascent has been, Beckham had to wait until his fifth season with the LA Galaxy to hoist his first trophy, the 2011 MLS Cup. Messi has done it in less than five weeks, and there could be more to come.
‘Messi is magical’
Messi has been with Inter Miami barely a full month, yet his arrival — and his prodigious talent — have lifted the club to its first trophy.
Before kickoff, the extent to which Messi has permeated the consciousness of fans is evident. Everywhere one looks, there are Messi jerseys of all kinds: Argentina, Barcelona, Inter Miami.
OK, maybe not all kinds; there are no PSG-era Messi jerseys to be found.
The home fans are aware of what’s on tap as well. How could they not be? Across the street from Geodis Park, Nashville’s home venue, is a barbershop owned by Jars of Clay guitarist Stephen Mason, aka Soccer Moses. Every game, he dresses up as Moses and holds up a sign that reads “Let My People Goal.”
This time around, he’s set up a Moses vs. Messi-ah clash, and says he has gotten his transformation from Stephen to Moses down to “about three minutes.” He also has started his own march to the match, appropriately titled “The Exodus.”
“The liturgy is still developing,” he quips, but it has made considerable progress. On the marquee adorning his barbershop, The Handsomizer, Mason has added his own special touch. It says: “Welcome Lionel Messi — the Argentinian Hany Mukhtar,” an ode to Nashville SC’s own creative force and reigning MLS MVP.
Earlier in the day, Clay Trainum, the authority on all things Nashville soccer history, sits in an eatery in the southern part of Nashville and prays that the final doesn’t go to penalties. After shootout wins over FC Cincinnati and Club America, he feels NSC’s shootout karma has been exhausted. Little did he know how prescient his concerns would turn out to be.
The Miami fans present are feeling the love, supremely confident that the side would raise its first trophy. And why not? With the exception of a penalty shootout win over FC Dallas, Miami has laid waste to its competition. The depressing days of earlier this season are a distant memory, replaced by the team’s breathtaking play in reaching the final.
“We know that this guy [Messi] is magical,” says Chris Moramarco, a founding member of Miami’s Vice City 1896 supporters group who drove 13 hours to attend the match. “We’ve seen him do it over and over. We see that his intensity doesn’t drop. It doesn’t matter who he’s playing for. This is what he does.
“You can see that this guy transcends culture, nationalities. And I think that’s the beauty of what we’re about to witness.”
‘You can see they love the game’
Twenty-four hours before kickoff, Miami GM Chris Henderson is channeling his inner John “Hannibal” Smith of “A-Team” fame. He loves it when a plan comes together — it is a vital part of his job, after all — but the degree to which Miami’s capture of Messi, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba has worked has exceeded even his expectations. Granted, Inter Miami’s plan ran deeper than just bringing in the aforementioned trio — Henderson did what he could to bring in players who were good on the ball, the better to maximize Messi’s influence once he arrived.
All that said, the rapidity with which the trio has assimilated to all things MLS has been astonishing. So has the ability of the team’s existing players to adapt to their new teammates. There were some hiccups in Miami’s vision: Injuries to midfielders Jean Mota and Gregore meant that the team’s young players got thrown into the deep end sooner than expected.
“We suffered a lot early this year,” Henderson says. “All our young guys got a lot of opportunities with these injuries. We didn’t see it in results, but this experience really helped their confidence, and a player like [Benji] Cremaschi or Noah Allen, just being able to get these minutes and then integrate with the team, has been really good.”
The speed of Miami’s turnaround has been a sight to behold, but that’s what happens when you bring in proven world-class winners like Messi, Busquets and Alba. It raises the overall levels, and from there, good things happen.
Granted, you’re talking about players at the extreme end of the talent scale, but even manager Tata Martino said there would need to be an adjustment period. Yet the tranquility that has accompanied their arrival has given them the calm to focus on the task at hand. For Henderson, the adaptation period was near instantaneous.
“It was really the first training session,” Henderson says. “Alba came a little bit after, but Messi and Busquets stepped on the field, and instantly we were creating 10 times the amount of chances in attack because of these guys. You can see the difference in all the players around them. Some guys were nervous the first couple training sessions, but the level and the confidence of the rest of the group, and just the quality that they brought, it really did surprise me.”
It helps when a superstar comes in with the right attitude, as too often in MLS, players from abroad have arrived thinking they could just operate on cruise control. Not this trio. That was vital given that Miami was — and still is — in last place when league play resumes.
“They’re asking, ‘What tournaments do we play? How can we win trophies? What’s the pathway to get there?'” Henderson says. “They wanted to know how they could win and how they could help our team turn around. That is a huge sign. And just the way they come out and play every day. You can see they love the game. It was really just a transition for them just coming in and changing the whole mentality and the whole level of the group.”