In many ways, Lionel Messi’s transformation of Inter Miami was instantaneous. He arrived in 2023 with God-like pull and, of course, with extraterrestrial talent. He attracted unfathomable attention. He required new levels of security and professionalism. He turned Average Joes into goal creators, and a cellar-dweller into a trophy-winner, all in less than two months.
What he didn’t instantly have, though, was full control. He needed time to familiarize himself with levers of power. So his takeover of Inter Miami was gradual, and largely unseen — until now.
Now, in Year 3, it seems complete. Messi will aim for multiple titles in 2025 with a longtime teammate as his head coach, and with his “papá futbolístico” — his former academy coach and “soccer dad” — overseeing Inter Miami’s roster.
If his first half-year was mania, and his second year Most Valuable, this one will be an experiment: Can a superstar-GM, à la LeBron James, succeed in Major League Soccer?
In 2024, Messi assembled a superteam of friends; they won the Supporters’ Shield with a record number of regular-season points; but they crashed out of the CONCACAF Champions Cup and MLS playoffs.
In 2025, they are thoroughly, undeniably Messi’s team. The question is whether they are better for it.
Messi’s growing influence
Messi, like any supremely successful athlete, has been granted significant influence throughout his career. As a humble, soft-spoken introvert, he hasn’t always wielded it. But he has used it, oftentimes with his father, friends or confidants as his intermediaries.
In Miami, where his stature dwarfed the club’s, he initially used his power to lift standards. “He stood up for the group a lot of times when we were having issues with flights, or meals weren’t good enough,” Kamal Miller, a Miami defender in 2023, told Yahoo Sports last year. “He was the one to speak up and represent the team to the owners and the coaches.” Staff would change their ways at Messi’s command.
That, though, is typical captain behavior. Messi’s 2024-25 offseason has been something else.
It began when head coach Tata Martino resigned due to “personal reasons.” Four days later, Inter Miami hired a replacement: Javier Mascherano, whose primary qualification seemed to be his decade as Messi’s teammate at Barcelona and with the Argentine national team. Mascherano’s only prior coaching experience had been with Argentina youth teams, whom he took to three major tournaments; they exited all three without a knockout-round win.
The pugnacious former midfielder was hired, at least in part, because Inter Miami managing owner Jorge Mas spoke with Messi soon after Martino’s resignation. “I asked him, ‘What is important to you? And what is important to get the best out of our roster and starting 11? How do we improve?’” Mas recalled. “Leo shared his thoughts with me.”
Mas went on to say that “familiarity with Leo and the other stars is an advantage in every aspect.”
“I want Leo to feel comfortable with the new coach who is coming in,” he added.
He clarified that he and Raúl Sanllehí — the former Barcelona executive whom Mas curiously hired as president of football operations in June — would “spearhead” the coaching search. But there hardly was any search. The decision was swift, and to anyone with a brain, the reason was clear.
“Leo gave me what I asked of him, which was input,” Mas acknowledged after introducing Mascherano. “That was Leo’s involvement and engagement with me, which is, frankly, all the time.”
Messi, though, did not stop there. After a reported confrontation with Sanllehí during preseason, the club reassigned Sanllehí to an entirely different, non-sporting department. It replaced him with Guillermo Hoyos, who was teenage Messi’s coach at La Masia, Barcelona’s academy.
As Hoyos subsequently bounced around to a bevy of short-lived coaching gigs at nondescript clubs in Greece, Cyprus, Bolivia, Colombia, Jacksonville, Chile, Argentina and Mexico, Messi reportedly stayed close with the now-61-year-old Argentine. Hoyos then followed Messi to Miami and became Inter’s academy director. Now, he’s the club’s top soccer exec — and it’s very unclear how much, if anything, he knows about the arcane roster regulations that govern MLS.
Messi’s Miami — but will it work?
When Messi arrived back in 2023, Miami’s soccer operations were run by sporting director Chris Henderson. Henderson, an MLS lifer, built the roster that, in 2024, won just as frequently without Messi as with him. He expertly navigated convoluted rules; he maneuvered underneath the salary cap; he is widely hailed in league circles as the architect of the Supporters’ Shield winners.
To reward him, midway through 2024, Inter hired Sanllehí above him.
And so, by the end of 2024, Henderson was off to Atlanta United; his former No. 2, Mark Prizant, the director of scouting and recruitment, had jumped to San Diego.
In their absence, Inter has dipped back into familiar wells. It replaced the outgoing Diego Gómez, Facundo Farías, Leonardo Campana and Matías Rojas with a new batch of South American talent. Argentine forward Tadeo Allende will complement Messi and Luis Suárez; Venezuelan midfielder Telasco Segovia should pair well with Sergio Busquets and Federico Redondo; Argentine fullback Gonzalo Luján and Uruguayan center back Maxi Falcón could shore up a leaky defense. This, once again, looks like the strongest roster in MLS.
But, of course, there are no guarantees that the new signings will pan out like last year’s did.
There is uncertainty surrounding who, exactly, will make the next signing.
And there are all sorts of questions about Mascherano’s ability to handle this job, his first as a coach at a pro club.
There are questions about his ability to equitably manage four players who, for eight years, were among his best friends. “The relationship I have with Leo, I have never denied and never will,” Mascherano acknowledged in December. He is also “very close” with Busquets, Suarez and Jordi Alba, and “I am not going to walk in the locker room and not be their friend,” he said. What he’ll try to do is “separate my work from my friendships,” all while building relationships with a dozen players whose names he’d probably never heard four months ago.
And there are questions about his ability to coach. Mascherano is well aware of that. “I have no doubt I can do this job,” he said. “But in the end, no matter what I say, the results and the season and what people see is where the opinion will emerge as to whether the skeptics were right or wrong.”
The skepticism, though, won’t start and stop with him. It will extend to Messi, whose fingerprints are now all over the club. It will extend to his influence, which, on the whole, has been overwhelmingly positive … but has it stretched too far?
Time will tell. Or, perhaps, Messi’s magical feet will render his GM capabilities irrelevant.
He has, after all, earned his influence. He’ll eventually be an Inter minority owner. He’ll essentially mold the club to his liking, whenever and however he wants.
