How Inter Miami built, and Lionel Messi wooed, the greatest MLS team ever

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 told Yahoo Sports in a phone interview.

Once Messi committed to Miami, up popped dozens of international players who, as Henderson says, “just want[ed] to come and play with him.”

Miami makes room for Messi

The process dates to 2021, when Henderson, an MLS lifer, took charge of Inter’s sporting department after 13 years in Seattle.

It accelerated in 2022 and 2023, as the end of Messi’s contract with Paris Saint-Germain neared. The possibility of luring him to Miami “affected all of our thought process in building and planning the team,” Henderson says. Messi had options — including PSG, Barcelona and Saudi Arabia — but Inter had only one: to construct a squad with a Messi-sized hole, one that could, in the dream scenario, be transformed almost overnight.

That meant, for example, acquiring Spanish playmaker Alejandro Pozuelo in July 2022, then letting his contract expire to free up a Designated Player (DP) slot. (Each MLS club is permitted to pay three DPs an uncapped salary that, no matter how lucrative, only counts $683,750 toward the cap. The rule, created to accommodate David Beckham in 2007, allowed Inter to afford Messi.)

Miami entered 2023 with only one true DP. Its second and third, forward Leonardo Campana and midfielder Gregore, were what Henderson calls “TAM-able.” Their relatively modest salaries gave Inter the flexibility to “buy down” their cap hits and make room for a new DP, if necessary.

To do that, an MLS club must tap into its pool of “allocation money.” (TAM is short for one type, Targeted Allocation Money.) Miami had already stockpiled significant sums, despite sanctions stemming from a cheating scandal. Then, in April 2023, it traded midfielder Bryce Duke and forward Ariel Lassiter to Montreal for defender Kamal Miller and, most importantly, $1.3 million in allocation money.

“And those were hard moves,” Henderson says. “Those were guys everyone liked, and they were good players. But … as we got closer to summer of ’23, we had to figure out ways that we could make room and maximize the summer transfer window.”

They made room for Messi by “buying down” Campana. They made room for the first of three Messi friends, Sergio Busquets, by parting ways with DP attacker Rodolfo Pizzaro. The second of three, Jordi Alba, took a sizable pay cut to join his former FC Barcelona teammates; Alba’s $1.5 million annual salary — as reported by the MLS Players Association — was close to the max allowable under the league’s byzantine roster rules for a non-DP. In December, Luis Suarez took a similar deal. And in January, amid unsubstantiated skepticism that Miami might be skirting rules, the superteam assembled.

‘Young legs’ leap at chance to play alongside Messi

Before Messi even arrived, though, in June 2023, Henderson and incoming head coach Tata Martino knew they’d have to supplement those aging stars with “some young legs,” as Henderson says.

They met frequently to discuss how they’d reshape a then-last-place roster. They needed “guys that can get around,” Henderson explains, but also ones with “technical quality that is a high enough level, that can combine and make the right movements, and complement all of [Messi’s and Busquets’] strengths.”

Fortunately, in addition to the DP slots, Miami had left room for “Under-22 Initiative” signings. Each MLS club can sign up to three young players whose non-DP salaries and transfer fees hit the cap at a hugely discounted rate of $150,000 or $200,000. Miami, as of June 2023, had zero such players.

So they turned to their “shadow teams” — internal lists of 3-5 players at each position, players who’ve been identified by scouts and data analysts, or offered by agents and other clubs, and whose skill sets align with Inter Miami’s wants and needs.

In line with processes that Henderson began sculpting in 2021, they had, for example, already scouted and vetted Diego Gómez, a then-20-year-old midfielder showing promise at Paraguayan club Libertad — where Martino had coached, twice, in the early 2000s.

“We brought him to Tata,” Henderson says. “Tata made a phone call right away.” And Inter was prepared to pounce, with a $3 million transfer fee. Fifteen months later, Gomez is the U-22 player of the year, and off to Brighton in the English Premier League for an eight-figure fee this coming winter.

Miami was still, in many ways, hindered by MLS rules, which are more financially restrictive than those of any other major men’s sports league, and more so than other soccer leagues around the globe. They limit the American league’s ability to attract or afford players like Gómez, or 20-year-old Argentine attacker Facundo Farías, or teenage Argentine defender Tomás Avilés, or 21-year-old Argentine midfielder Federico Redondo, among the highest-rated youngsters in South America.

Miami, however, had a pitch that no other MLS club ever had: Messi.

“I think it would’ve been harder to get Redondo [without Messi],” Henderson acknowledges. “Having a chance to play with Leo Messi really helped in that. … I can name like seven guys, 10 guys [on Inter’s current roster]” who came to Miami in part because they wanted to play with Messi.

And there were many more worldwide. The sporting department’s task was to suss out which ones would come to work; and which ones, on the other hand, might come as fanboys.

Inter Miami’s rebuild drives historic season

As they were clearing space for more than a dozen new players — by buying out a backup goalkeeper and striker, transferring Gregore and midfielder Jean Mota, and trading three defenders, including Miller and former captain DeAndre Yedlin — Inter Miami’s architects were also vetting their targets. There were calls to acquaintances and family members, coaches and teammates and the players themselves.

Some key questions, Henderson says, were: “Do they have the character to step on the field, and train, and play, with some of the greatest players who ever played? … Are they gonna be fans out there, or are they gonna actually come and make an impact?”

“You need to have a character that’s strong enough,” he adds, “and be able to stand on your own two feet, when one of the older players is getting on you because you lost the ball with no pressure.”

There were also cultural considerations. Adjusting to a new league and foreign country as a teen or young adult can be difficult. But Miami is bubbling with Latin influence; and Inter’s coaching staff and key players communicate almost exclusively in Spanish. That, for the dozen Hispanic players who’ve followed Messi to Miami, has helped ease the transition.

So, too, have the professionalism and leadership of Messi, Busquets, Suarez and Alba. “They come into training,” Henderson says, “and they don’t want to waste time, they want to get out and work hard.”

The result has been a season for the ages. After a rocky start, the Herons are 18W-6D-2L since the start of April. They won eight of nine MLS games while Messi was away at the Copa América, then injured. They clinched the Supporters’ Shield, the regular-season title, with a win at defending champion Columbus earlier this month. Next up, before the playoffs, is the final lap of a run at history.