Lionel Messi, Inter Miami & the task of becoming an MLS “superteam”

That ‘afterwards’ is now at hand. After half a year of breathless headlines and skyrocketing hype, amid talk of a new era in North American soccer after he and his team christened his Miami arrival with a storybook Leagues Cup championship, Messi, fellow luminaries Luis Suárez, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba and their teammates officially embark on his first full IMCF season as the curtain rises on MLS 2024 with their match vs. Real Salt Lake on Wednesday evening (8 pm ET | MLS Season Pass).

Miami boast, in the words of MLSsoccer.com’s own Armchair Analyst Matt Doyle, “the best and deepest roster I’ve ever seen in MLS.” By some measures, it may rank as the most expensively assembled as well. Will they scoop up every piece of hardware (five of them, give or take) in their path? Or might they stumble like so many galaticos-type projects in the past?

Whatever happens, the world is watching, and expectations are sky-high.

“I mean, you look at the roster on paper,” Michelle Kaufman, who covers IMCF for the Miami Herald, told MLSsoccer.com. “And you say, how can this team lose? They have nine or 10 national team players on this team. You have Lionel Messi and Luis Suárez; two of your attackers are two of the best attackers of this generation, coming from where they came from.

“Then you have Sergio Busquets, you have Jordi Alba, those four are the ‘Fab Four,’ I call them the Mount Rushmore, whatever – they are four of the best players in this generation, they come from Barcelona, they all know each other, they played together. You would think that you could just drop those on the field with seven other guys and they would win. And then you have other great talent, too.”