Lionel Messi has missed half the MLS season. Should he be MVP?

IIn a development that will only come as a shock to newborns and aliens alike, Lionel Messi’s MLS performances this season have been absolutely fantastic. He has been a key part of the Inter Miami team that topped the standings, has produced all kinds of goals and assists and has generally lived up to the hype every time he has taken the field.

Slightly more surprising, if his spectacular run ends with him winning the MLS Most Valuable Player Award (MVP), it would be unprecedented in North American men’s sports and almost unheard of in Europe’s most famous domestic men’s leagues – with one very notable exception.

At the time of writing, Messi is fifth in the MLS goals leaderboard with 17 and sixth in assists with 11, giving him a total of 28 goals, good for third in the league. Those numbers are solid, but hardly the stuff of a sure-fire MVP. And by Messi’s astronomical standards, they don’t stand out.

That is, until you consider that he achieved those numbers in just 18 appearances. That low total is due to a lengthy layoff following an ankle injury sustained during the Copa América, which sidelined him for months. Messi’s total number of appearances will reach 19, assuming he plays in the regular season finale on Saturday. He may add some goals and assists in the final game before the play-offs, but it’s unlikely he’ll finish the season as the league leader in those categories.

But per 90 minutes, Messi is leads the league in goals, assists and the combination of both. According to FBref, it also outperforms the expected versions of these metrics. In other words, he finishes difficult chances at a high pace and consistently provides assists to his teammates in unlikely situations.

These raw per-match figures stand out even in the context of Messi’s glittering career: the only two seasons in the domestic league in which he managed to score more goals per 90 minutes than 2024 are two seasons from his peak at Barcelona – 2011-2012, in which he scored 66 goals in 37 games for an average of 1.94 per 90, and the following season, where he contributed 57 goals plus assists for an average of 1.82. With Inter Miami, Messi is scoring 1.73 goals per match this season.

Like Barcelona and PSG, Inter Miami is reaping the benefits, capturing the Supporters’ Shield a few weeks ago for the best regular season record in the league. With a win in Saturday’s final, Miami would set a new MLS record for points in a single season.

However, there are plenty of other solid candidates for the 2024 MLS MVP. Cucho Hernández is the attacking talisman for the Columbus Crew, as is Luciano Acosta for an FC Cincinnati side that looks very different from a year ago. Christian Benteke will almost certainly win the Golden Boot, which automatically puts him in the MVP conversation. LAFC’s Denis Bouanga was just as devastating off the dribble as he was in front of goal, and Messi’s teammate Luis Suárez has also played a big role in Miami’s success with his team-leading (provisional) goal tally.

Can a player really be the most “valuable” in the entire league if his team performs almost as well without him as with him, as is the case with Miami and Messi? Wouldn’t Benteke’s 23 goals be considered more valuable considering they make up a whopping 44% of DC United’s total? (That’s the highest percentage in the league; Bouanga is second, with 32% of LAFC’s goals.) Where would FC Cincy be without Acosta pulling the strings at No. 10, or the Crew without Cucho’s goals?

In North America, MVP awards have not historically been won based on “per-game” statistics; rather, they acknowledge a body of work spanning as much of an entire season as possible. If Messi finishes with 19 appearances in 2024, he will have played in just 55% of Inter Miami’s games. If he were to win MVP, it would be by far the lowest percentage of games in which an MVP played in the history of the North American men’s major leagues.

There are plenty of historical precedents of a player missing out on an MVP award because he doesn’t play enough. Joel Embiid has lost one and maybe two NBA MVPs in recent seasons, with at least part of the reasoning being that other players (notably Nikola Jokić) were on the court more often. He may struggle to ever win a game again, with NBA rules now stating that MVP candidates must have played in at least 65 games, or about 79% of the season.

In 2017, Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz looked like a surefire MVP before a torn ACL ended his season after thirteen games. He finished the regular season with more passing touchdowns than Tom Brady, who won the award instead. (And like Messi, Wentz’s absence ultimately didn’t ruin the Eagles’ season; they went on to win the Super Bowl against Brady and the Patriots with backup QB Nick Foles.)

In baseball, Mike Trout in 2017 and Hanley Ramirez in 2013 each had incredible seasons that were impacted by injuries, and neither were serious contenders in the MVP voting despite being ahead or close to the winners in key metrics.

The standards in Europe’s five major football leagues differ, but not by much. For starters, most of them have only recently started handing out MVP or MVP-style awards – for most circuit history, “player of the season” awards have come from writers’ associations or specific magazines. But among the newer awards presented in the competition, Messi’s participation level in 2024 still falls short in all but one case.

And that one perhaps applies most to Messi’s 2024 – something to point out if you think Messi deserves this year’s Landon Donovan Award.

The 2017/2018 season was Neymar’s first at PSG and the Brazilian was at his peak, scoring 19 goals and 13 assists in 20 games. However, he broke his metatarsal not long after New Year’s and missed the rest of the season.

Like Messi in 2024, Neymar led the league in performance per game that season. Like Messi in 2024, his absence didn’t hurt his team much in the league – PSG still won Ligue 1 with ease. Strangely, like Messi in 2024, Neymar had this kind of season with a Uruguayan striker (Edinson Cavani) finishing as the team’s top scorer.

So the question is by what standard will Messi be judged – the one that relates to the country and league he plays in, or the one that has made an exception in cases like Messi’s?

The answer could easily be the same as usual: that Messi’s benchmark is his, and others do not apply.