Lionel Messi Is Doing Just Fine in Miami, Thank You

Yeah, he’s fine. Did you think he might not be fine? Was there anyone out there who thought Lionel Messi, a few months after leading Argentina to a World Cup title, was going to struggle leading Inter Miami in MLS? Rest easy, doubting friend: Two games into his new career, Messi already has four goal involvements, and we might as well take a look at each of them right now because nothing says “he’s fine” as efficiently—nothing conveys so profound a sense of holistic fineness—as some videos of Lionel Messi playing soccer.

Goal involvement no. 1. Leagues Cup. Messi’s debut match for Inter, against Cruz Azul. LeBron’s there to hug him before the game. Leo subs on for 18-year-old Benjamin Cremaschi in the 54th minute. In the 94th minute, he does this:

Why, yes, that does appear to be a stoppage-time winner from a 25-yard free kick in his very first game for the club. See? Fine.

Goal involvement no. 2. Still the Leagues Cup. Inter versus Atlanta United. Messi’s first start. He enters the pitch holding the hand of DJ Khaled’s 6-year-old son, as one does, obviously. Sergio Busquets is playing. It takes the two of them (Busquets and Messi, not Busquets and DJ Khaled’s son, though that would have been sick) all of eight minutes to do this:

Messi’s fine. Goal involvement no. 3. Same game, 22nd minute. Bunch of Inter guys scramble toward the Atlanta box, blip bleep bloop, Robert Taylor crosses, Messi does this:

He’s fine. Goal involvement no. 4. This one’s an assist. Diversify your greatness! Deep in his own half, Messi picks up a stray back pass and goes casually tearing down the pitch. Forty-ish yards later, he flicks the ball to Taylor, who does this:

Messi is fiiiine. He’s playing Orlando City in the Leagues Cup on Wednesday. Orlando City is not a bad team. I still wouldn’t want to be on the pitch for them. At least not until after the match, when I would try to wheedle my way into history’s most lopsided shirt swap. Pay my mortgage, Leo!

Life just has a way of working out for Lionel Messi. Keep in mind that this is someone for whom “adversity” means “being paid an enormous sum of money to live in Paris.” He didn’t—quelle tragique!—really like Paris. Now he’s liberated and having fun. Let’s compare Messi’s last two work environments.

At PSG, he had to wear a somber, businesslike navy kit to work, like a stressed-out banker wearing a suit on the Metro:

Photo by Justin Setterfield/Getty Images

In Miami, he wears jubilant pink, like a polo-sporting southern lawyer eyeing up the oyster bar at an outdoor wedding reception:

Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images

In Paris, a day out meant, I don’t know, plodding through the Louvre or something. In Miami, it means hitting up Publix for some Lucky Charms.

In Paris, going out to dinner meant (I’m guessing, but you know I’m right) listening to Kylian Mbappé complain at great length about absolutely every tiny thing that has ever happened to him. In Miami, it means chatting with Victoria Beckham. Victoria Beckham probably knows who Kylian Mbappé is—I assume Victoria Beckham knows everything—but she doesn’t care. Victoria Beckham has seen mega-celebrity from every conceivable angle; no 24-year-old’s ego could ever surprise or impress her. There may be no environment on this earth where a person is more empowered not to give a shit about Kylian Mbappé’s many exhausting feelings than the 50-foot radius around Victoria Beckham. Posh has perspective.

In Paris, or really anywhere in Europe, and frankly almost anywhere on earth, Messi couldn’t do normal-person things in public without attracting the sorts of crowds you normally associate with the pope waving from a Vatican balcony. In Miami, he can pop into the Adidas store while attracting only a smallish group of fans—a group that, yes, fine, was described as a “throng” and a “swarm” by the media, and sure, OK, there was some impassioned chanting of his name, and yeah, I’ll admit, one guy did jump security and try to rush Messi to nab a selfie. But by Leo’s standards, this was as close to blissful anonymity as it gets.

The point is, for Messi, moving from Paris to Miami must feel like teleporting from the grim madness of the Arc de Triomphe roundabout at rush hour directly onto the back of a joyously whooshing Jet Ski. Is it any wonder Messi’s game seems imbued with a new aura of ocean-sunrise, umbrellas-in-cocktails tranquility? Let him whoosh!

Two questions. Here’s the first one. Can he keep this up? A pair of games is not a ton of data points. Carlos Vela says he’ll have to work harder as a striker in MLS because the level of service forwards get in America is so much worse than it is in Europe. In Europe, elite forwards have the ball set before them on a silver platter, by a butler wearing white gloves; in America, it’s more like you’re waiting for someone to call your number at Arby’s. Furthermore, Inter is, most people would agree, not a very good soccer team. They were dead last in MLS’s Eastern Conference when Messi came aboard. Can a gang of journeymen and teenagers really keep a 36-year-old superstar rolling in goals?

My take: Eh, why not? For a whole bunch of reasons, the playing field of MLS is heavily tilted in favor of attackers. The league’s byzantine salary-cap rules make it easier for owners to amass flashy goal scorers than solid defenders. (Attackers, on average, are paid 150 percent more than defenders in the U.S., a far wider gap than in most of the rest of the world.) And the crushing summer heat under which the league plays much of its schedule is easier on forwards, who can lurk restfully for much of the match, than on defenders, who have to spend 90 minutes doing a lot of tiresome running and pointing and communicating. The result? Defenses in MLS are often, no disrespect, kinda bad. And Messi is the greatest attacking player in the history of soccer. So, mathwise, if the service he’s getting is a bit worse—and I dunno, that Busquets lob against Atlanta looked OK to me—but the defenses he’s playing against are a lot worse, I’m not sure there’s any huge reason to worry?

Here’s the second question. How will Messi change soccer in America? I’m normally wary of questions like this. The decades-long search for a magic bullet that will suddenly make soccer an NFL peer in this country has tended to work against the kind of patient, incremental change that helps establish a meaningful culture around the game. On the other hand, we’re talking about Lionel f—ing Messi. He’s already having a clear influence, the most obvious sign of which is the upward spiral of ticket resale prices since he arrived. “I could sell my seat at the Inter game for like $1,000,” an LAFC season-ticket holder told me recently. “But if I’m going to give up the chance to see Messi, why have tickets to watch soccer at all?”

Messi’s bringing spectacle. Attention. Money. Kardashians are turning up at MLS games. But his real impact may turn out to be how other players around the world view MLS. Last week, Inter completed the signing of the 20-year-old midfielder Facundo Farías, a highly regarded young player from Colón in the Argentine Primera División. Farías had reached the moment in his development when he needed to leave Argentina to pursue the ultimate goal of playing for a top European club. If Messi hadn’t moved to Inter, that next step would almost certainly have been a mid-tier European side, maybe in Portugal or Italy. Farías had even been linked with a move to Manchester United. But he wants to play with Messi, which means that American fans now get to spend at least two or three years watching a young player with star potential who never would have come here otherwise. That, to me, is a fun outcome. That, repeated enough times over, actually could help transform the sport in the United States. Normalize whooshing!