Messi Is Dominating MLS Opponents, Just As He Would In Other Leagues

Technically, Lionel Messi has yet to play his first MLS regular season game. The Argentine star’s first three matches for Inter Miami have come in the Leagues Cup, the competition that is a new joint venture between MLS and Liga MX that includes all 47 teams from the combined leagues.

But with five goals and an assist inside in his first three appearances, there is already a segment of the soccer-watching population using his stellar performances to attack the quality of his new league.

The general crux of it goes like this: If Messi comes to MLS at age 36 near the end of his career and immediately dominates, it shows MLS has a long way to go to be taken seriously.

That makes sense within the parameters of conventional logic, which suggests players who are 36 are usually a shadow of their former selves. The problem with Messi — as is the case with most singularly great athletes — is that he defies those assumptions.

Messi is not the same player as he was for FC Barcelona in his mid 20s. But he is far more effective relative to his prime than most 36-year-old players, and his prime was better than pretty much anyone else who has ever played the sport.

He’s less than a year removed from winning the Golden Ball at the 2022 FIFA World Cup as the tournament’s best player. He’s less than three years from scoring 30 times for FC Barcelona to complete a remarkable string of 13 consecutive La Liga seasons with at least 20 goals.

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His two relatively lean years at Paris St. Germain may have been interpreted as slowing due to age. But there were few signs of deterioration in Qatar last November and December, where he was the most important player for the World Cup winning side and played all 690 minutes of Argentina’s championship run.

Major League Soccer is not at the level of Europe’s top leagues. It’s own executives don’t claim to be. And its short term goals are to become the top league in North America, a mantle still currently carried by Mexico’s Liga MX. But in the bigger landscape of the world’s most popular sport, MLS is in the respectable position of being one of the top 15 to 30 leagues on the planet, depending who you bask. And if you consider that Messi’s entire career has come at the very highest levels of the sport, his numbers so far against MLS opponents are exactly what you’d expect in any competition of similar level.

On the other hand, what might be concerning for those who want to build MLS bigger based on the attention Messi brings is the nature of Miami’s early wins with him on the pitch. Unlike Barcelona, PSG or to a lesser extent Argentina, the Herons haven’t dominated the flow of play. Instead, they’ve been patient and allowed those opponents to make critical mistakes before ruthlessly capitalizing.

One telling stat is corner kicks: Miami have trailed their opponents 13-3 combined in Messi’s two starts, yet won both games comfortably, 4-0 over Atlanta and 3-2 over Orlando. That detail reflects that the Herons haven’t exactly adapted and overly aggressive posture in their wins. And it might reflect a key weakness in how MLS rosters are built.

While payrolls across the league are higher than ever, the current roster rules necessitate spending the overwhelming majority of your salary payments on the top quarter or third of your squad. That makes having a consistent and deep squad at all positions more challenging than it might be in other leagues where the payrolls are similar. And it may make MLS rosters more vulnerable to the inconsistency upon which Messi and company have capitalized.

Of the three teams Messi has played, Liga MX’s Cruz Azul offered the stiffest test. Both Miami goals required moments of individual brilliance rather than stemming from a defensive error, including a Messi free-kick winner deep in second-half stoppage time. If anything, Cruz Azul were deserving of a point on the day, and with better finishing might have had free. And it may have reflected a more balanced squad on the whole, the kind you find more often south of the border where clubs don’t necessarily spend more money, but are free to spread it around.