Another year, another trophy for Lionel Messi.
With two goals in a 3-2 win over defending MLS Cup champions Columbus Crew, Inter Miami’s global superstar on Wednesday secured the MLS Supporters’ Shield, awarded each year to the team with the best regular season record .
It is the 39th club trophy in Messi’s cabinet, so the temptation is to label this one as ‘business as usual’. It is perhaps one of his most unexpected club titles to date.
Most of Messi’s big moments in MLS have been triumphs of validation – including of MLS’s own ambition. The league is still not very close to its goal of becoming one of the top leagues in the world, but Messi’s arrival has brought them closer in concrete ways. His pink Inter Miami jersey is Adidas’ bestseller worldwide because of all its football properties, an unheard of phenomenon. achievement for a kit with an MLS logo on the sleeve. An increasing number of talented players from abroad are signing up to play in the league, and just as importantly, big clubs in Europe and elsewhere are increasingly scouting the MLS in search of the next big thing (or at least a bargain ).
Messi has certainly given a boost to MLS’s unique 10-year media rights partnership with Apple, which puts the vast majority of games in a league desperate for fame behind a hard paywall. What better way to get people to open their wallets than the chance to see the greatest player of all time? His memorable Leagues Cup debut and eventual final victory lent legitimacy to an emerging league heavily promoted by the MLS and Liga MX, even as it further clogged the team’s schedules and has no known counterpart anywhere else in the world of football.
This supporters shield is different from all of them. It’s an MLS original, born from the league’s inherent weirdness through the efforts of its first and most dedicated fans. Messi and Miami not only boosted their standing in the league by winning the Shield; they have etched their name into a piece of American soccer culture, and into one of the two longest-running indicators of sporting success in the MLS.
The Shield’s existence is down to a grassroots movement that feels a world away from the superstardom of Messi and what the league as a whole aspires to. The original trophy was created just a few years into the league’s existence by supporters (hence the name), who felt that, in addition to the champion play-offs and the MLS Cup, there should be recognition for the team with most points in the competition. end of the year, as happens in virtually every other national competition in the world. The original shield itself was made for a few thousand dollars by an art student at Kansas University. It has since been replaced, but is usually passed between fan organizations rather than between club officials. Wednesday was a rare instance where this was not the case: because none of Inter Miami’s supporter groups are registered with the Independent Supporters’ Council (ISC), the group that administers the Shield, fans of 2023 winners FC Cincinnati drove to Columbus to pick up the weapons. deliver it to Inter Miami for their locker room party (in theory, Miami fans will hold the shield once a group joins the ISC).
Despite the unexpected involvement of Messi and all of Miami’s stars, there was no pomp and circumstance on the pitch when the shield exchange took place (a clear missed opportunity by the league). No star will be added above the Inter Miami crest, and the club will not be known as champions of the 2024 league. In a way, that’s fair: the size of the league and its unbalanced schedule mean that the Shield is not an inviolable measure of how one team is doing compared to all the others. But the Shield is still a pretty good indication of which MLS team was actually the best over the course of the season, and for Miami to win the team so soon after Messi’s arrival is a huge achievement.
It may seem like ancient history now, but remember that Miami missed the playoffs last year and finished dead last when Messi arrived. Yet they won not just because of Messi, but because a constantly evolving team quickly came together and learned to play as well without their biggest star as they did with him. Messi has missed 15 games this year, mainly due to injury, but still managed to post an impressive 17 goals and 15 assists in his 17 appearances so far, as Miami averages an impressive 2.12 points per game with the Argentinian. For most teams in MLS history, and certainly most Shield winners, losing such a productive player would be devastating. In Miami, the team did even better (barely), with 2.13 points per game in the games that Messi missed.
That partly speaks to the performance across the field. Luis Suárez of course scored a lot of important goals. Jordi Alba and Sergio Busquets have lifted the play of those around them through their work rate and intelligence. Smart young additions like Federico Redondo lifted the team’s ceiling beyond the stars. Naughty people like Robert Taylor performed professional services all the time. Defensive unit and goalkeeper Drake Callender also repeatedly stepped up in big moments, including on Wednesday when Callender saved a Cucho Hernández penalty that would have tied a game Miami needed to win to clinch the Shield.
after newsletter promotion
The Shield win also speaks to the ability of head coach Tata Martino, who essentially built the plane while teaching his team to fly it…sometimes without the captain. Between the end of the 2023 season and today, Inter Miami has transferred approximately half of their active roster of 30 players. That includes players like Gregore, DeAndre Yedlin and Kamal Miller, who were key parts of the team’s core. Several of those additions, such as Redondo, right-back Marcelo Weigandt and midfielder Matías Rojas, arrived mid-season or had their introductions interrupted by injury.
Despite proving their worth over the course of a full season, Supporters’ Shield winners are usually not remembered unless they also win the MLS Cup – something only four Shield winners have done in the past two decades. If Inter Miami breaks this trend and does the double, the sight of Messi lifting the Philip F Anschutz Trophy on a stage, surrounded by confetti and cheerful teammates in a sold-out Chase Stadium in Fort Lauderdale, would be strong enough to to overshadow everything else. , including the shield. This is especially true as it could be Messi’s last appearance on American shores; his contract expires at the end of this season.
But if Miami makes an early exit from the playoffs, winning the Shield will always give Messi and Miami their own unassailable claim to MLS greatness. And the Shield itself could therefore, by sheer association, benefit from status.