Lionel Messi turned the world upside down with his new team and brought a lot of attention to South Florida. Now, there is so much talk about Inter Miami, which is only in its fourth season and locked in last place in the league, that for the club, and for all of American soccer, it will be a powerful push to reach a fundamentally new level. . The process had already begun, even before Messi stepped onto the pitch and scored that decisive goal from a free kick.
“The scale of this announcement, no matter how much I’ve been preparing, visualizing and dreaming, is mind-boggling,” announced Jorge Mas, the South Florida-born Cuban-American billionaire and managing owner of Inter Miami. – You would have to live in a cave to not know that Leo Messi is now an Inter Miami player. Now everyone is talking about it.”
Miami now trembles with the “Messi effect” in all respects: the city, which is quietly considered the capital of Latin America due to the largest Argentine community in the United States, has already been filled with graffiti in the glory of Leo, and restaurants have added their favorite dish to the menu: breaded meat, known as milanesa. For Argentines, who have built their culture of life in Miami from and towards a life similar to that of their homeland, living in the same city with the main symbol of their country is like adding the most important detail to the puzzle.
Messi graffiti in Miami
Photo: CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH/EPA/TASS
According to the Fanatics site, which sells all official MLS team uniforms, the Inter Miami jersey instantly became the best-selling team jersey in all of sports. The company said on Thursday it has sold more club shirts since Monday than in the previous seven and a half months to 2023. In addition, sales are keeping pace with the current record for shirt sales set by Cristiano Ronaldo immediately after his signing by Manchester United in 2021. Now the team is no longer for sale, only pre-order is available for October.
“He will give us global exposure that we could never have without a player like Messi,” MLS commissioner Don Garber said. “Whether in South America or Argentina or Europe, because he had a legendary career in Barcelona and in France. Our goal is to try to get as much attention as possible for Messi.”
And for this, the club does everything possible to please Leo as much as possible.
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new coach
Inter Miami is completely reshaping its work for Messi, and it’s not just about marketing activities. Agree that this alone would not be enough – we are still talking about the football team, and not about the commercial promotion of the brand at the expense of Leo. The club is doing poorly with sports results – Phil Neville, as the head coach, clearly could not cope with the tasks. Gerardo Martino, a specialist who had already worked with Messi, was called upon to lift Inter Miami from the bottom of the MLS table.
Martino took charge of Barcelona in the 2013/2014 season, taking charge of the team after the departure of Pep Guardiola. He started strong: not a single defeat in the first 16 games, full understanding with the players and victory in the Spanish Super Cup. But after such a strong rise, there was an equally strong fall: there were no more trophies, defeats became more frequent, and as a result, the coach left. He himself described his period of work at Barça quite harshly: he said that he had not left his mark on the club, he had not shown himself as a coach and the only thing he had learned was to be among the stars. He was so disappointed in himself that he doesn’t even want to consider the Super Bowl as an achievement.
Gerardo Martin
Photo: Hector Vivas/Getty Images
A few months after Barcelona, Martino took charge of the Argentine national team. There he was also a regular: the team reached the Copa América final twice and lost twice. The fans began to blame Messi for this, after which he even announced his retirement from the national team. Martino supported his captain’s decision. True, a month later he himself left the team, but Leo nevertheless returned.
Messi’s path in the national team is difficult, but great: from rejection to recognition
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Along the way, they parted ways: Martino went to the United States to work with Atlanta United, with whom he won the MLS Cup, but left quickly due to disputes with the board over the issue of hiring a team. Then there was work with the Mexican national team, the CONCACAF Gold Cup and absenteeism in the group for the 2022 World Cup. Martino was fired and was out of work for six months. The Argentine admitted that he really likes working in MLS, so he was ready to consider offers from North American League clubs. Here everything went well: with Messi, who speaks very little English, they hired a “native” coach to make him feel comfortable, and Martino’s desire to work in MLS was fully satisfied.
For Inter, this is a good deal all around: back in Atlanta, the Argentine coach confirmed his high level. There is a chance that this Argentine tandem will bring good luck to the team, which in its four-year history has yet to achieve any success.
Completion of the composition.
The next stage of the restructuring is a new team. To reclaim Messi, the club handed over Rodolfo Pizarro for free to Greek AEK, who needed to carve out a place for themselves in the team due to the “designated player rule” (according to it, clubs can sign up to three players with a salary above set maximum).
We discuss it in more detail here:
No one else left the team, but there were acquisitions, and for the most part they were made specifically for Messi. Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba joined Inter, both from Barcelona for free. The club also acquired Diego Gómez for €2.7 million.
Luis Suárez really wants to join Miami, so much so that he is ready for literally anything. Mundo Deportivo claims that to break the contract, Gremio, in which the Uruguayan has played since this winter, demands the return of his entire salary for six months. ESPN Brasil reported that Suárez was willing to pay the rest of his contract to leave because the Brazilian club did not want to let him go. The striker’s agreement with the team is calculated until December 2024 and, according to ESPN, Suárez will have to pay about 10 million dollars and he is willing to do so, because he will no longer be able to play in Gremio at the expected level. of him, and wants to reduce the load (and in the United States the soccer less intense).
Inter Miami is already being called the American Barcelona, and it really does feel like some kind of movie where old friends meet again at the end of their careers under the bright South Florida sun.
stadium extension
The current Inter Miami stadium only had a capacity for 19,000 spectators, enough before Messi’s arrival, but not with him. In June, the club signed a contract to fill the stadium’s corners, increasing the stadium’s capacity to 22,200. In addition, Inter Miami is building its own stadium, but there everything is much more complicated and longer – they plan to complete construction by 2026-2027, and Messi is unlikely to continue playing at that time.
Before Messi’s debut, Inter had an average of 16,483 fans per game, ranking 25 out of 29 in the league. There are currently no tickets for sale on the club’s website for any game this season, and this factor It was the trigger for big changes in the MLS. The league clubs have agreed that they will now contribute to the general treasury not 33% of the proceeds from ticket sales, but only 10%. This will help equalize the teams in the number of deductions.
The Inter Miami stadium has a capacity for only 19,000 spectators
Photo: Megan Briggs/Getty Images
New security measures
The excitement around Messi is so great that the club had to develop additional security measures.
“The players will approach the stadium by bus through a tunnel,” Mas said. – All these security protocols are already prepared to work both here and abroad. And this applies not only to our games, but it will be a ubiquitous phenomenon. As you will remember, the Argentine team trained in Miami before flying to Doha. We had the chance to see Messi mania at our gates every day during training. We did well then and we are very prepared now. We’ve been preparing for this for a long time.”
