Usually football fans are delighted to hear that the opponents’ best player has unexpectedly been ruled out, but there are exceptions.
On Saturday, Houston Dynamo issued an apology to their fans because Lionel Messi was not in the Inter Miami squad for their match in Houston last night. The Dynamo offered free tickets for future home games as compensation, but what use was that to anybody? Messi wouldn’t be playing in those games either.
It would be understandable to hear this and think, this is simply not a serious league. My own reaction when I saw the news was to feel sympathy, because the previous weekend I had been one of those people paying way over the odds to see Messi play for Inter Miami against the City Football Group entity, New York City FC.
The fact is that every match Messi plays between now and his eventual retirement is not really about the match itself. All that really counts is the chance to see (and to boast that you’ve seen) the greatest player of all time.
Ken Early: Heimir Hallgrímsson’s plan very nearly pays off in Ireland’s solid performance against Senegal
PSG’s costly failures entertained Europe for years, but now they could be on the brink of an era of domination
Ken Early: Emi Martínez commits one of the most expensive mistakes in Villa’s history
Crystal Palace beating Manchester City in the FA Cup let us see the real purpose of football
Miami’s Chase Stadium isn’t in Miami – it’s barely even in Fort Lauderdale. Located 55km north of downtown Miami in a concrete wasteland off I-95, it’s an unlovely ground with temporary stands at each end that increase the capacity to 22,000, and long queues for the Portakabin toilets.
It’s a long way from Camp Nou for Los Geriatricos, Miami’s four ex-Barcelona legends, Messi, Luis Suarez, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba. Suarez and Busquets would join Messi in a World XI of the 2010s. But there’s not a Suarez or a Busquets shirt to be seen. The ubiquity of Messi 10 almost feels like a joke, he towers above even his fellow greats.
Messi is 37 now and missed 14 weeks last season after suffering a horrible ankle injury in the Copa America. Seeing his right ankle collapse inward beneath him as he tried to cross with his left foot, you felt the end could not be far off.
Yet here he was again, looking a little thinner than the last time I saw him play live, in the 2022 World Cup final in Doha. It’s good that he’s keeping the weight off, but can he still turn it on?
Yes he can. It feels like when the ball comes to Messi the game briefly enters an unstable state in which all manner of decisive events become suddenly possible. Will he play one of those perfectly-weighted defence-breaking passes that curve unerringly to the target as though laser-guided?
Will he begin one of those runs that seem to pick up speed as they go, floating over the ground as defenders scramble to keep up? Will he just lay it back to Busquets as he has a million times before?
Whatever it is, he’ll do it before anyone else realises what is happening. One measure of his supreme efficiency is the speed of his decision-making, which is difficult to keep up with even when you’re sitting in the stand; you can empathise with the defenders who have to cope with it out on the field.
After five minutes he takes a corner short then slices through the left of the NYC defence to lay on the opener for Tomas Aviles. Everyone raises their phones to film the celebrations. This is what we came for.
I have to confess I missed some of the build-up to the goal because even though Messi is out there I can’t stop looking at Luis Suarez. Suarez is six months older than Messi but tonight it looks more like 20 years.
This is Suarez’s 983rd top-level match. It’s Messi’s 1096th, but a dividend of his efficiency is that he spent a lot of those minutes walking around at golf pace.
Suarez has always functioned as a limitless energy source for his team, fighting, hustling, tearing around the pitch. (Maybe his 143 caps sweating blood for Uruguay should count double.)
Now he’s thickened out and worse, seems to be limping, dragging his right leg around after him. Apparently he has been postponing hip surgery, which is characteristic of the scornful attitude towards injury he has demonstrated throughout his career. The bill for all that bravery is now well overdue.
As Messi prepares to take another corner Suarez takes a much-needed breather, standing bent over with his hands on his knees for several seconds. As the ball comes in he flings himself to the ground, appeals vainly to the ref, argues with the defender Birk Risa, then shakes his hand in apparent rapprochement. At half-time he will angrily confront Risa in the tunnel, for which he will be fined by the league.
Why is he still doing this? It’s not the money; when you earned nearly €30 million a year at your Barcelona peak, it can’t be that exciting to make $1.5 million a year playing in this second-rate league.
Honestly, it seems as though he is putting himself through all this so his family can live near their friends, the Messis. Their houses are located a few minutes’ walk from each other in the gated waterfront suburb of Bay Colony.
Suarez bought his house last year for $11.5 million from a couple who had bought it for $3.6 million in 2020. So the previous owners got paid more per year to own this house than Suarez makes playing in MLS. It’s a very South Florida success story, though you feel this part of the world could do with less property speculation and more stories like the enduring bond between these families.
The key moment of the game comes midway through the first half, when Miami’s goalscorer Aviles is sent off for a professional foul and NYC equalise from the subsequent free-kick. Now Miami must chase the game with nine outfield players and when you consider the Geriatrico factor they really only have five players who are able to chase.
NYC, under the progressive Dutch coach Pascal Jansen – the man Robbie Keane replaced at Ferencvaros – play keep-ball. Suarez is taken off a few minutes into the second half, shortly after NYC go 2-1 up. The outlook for Miami is grim.
But right at the end Messi saves them, the NYC defence forced into a disorderly retreat before another of his curving accelerating runs until he slides a perfect through-ball for Telasco Segovia to chip the onrushing goalkeeper.
When we watched the 35-year-old Messi lift the World Cup at his fifth attempt, it looked like we had witnessed the perfect ending.
Now we have to expect there will be one more chapter in the United States-dominated World Cup in 2026: all the forces – personal, corporate, political – are aligned.
It doesn’t matter to Messi how many Houston Dynamo fans he has to annoy to keep himself in the kind of shape where that sixth World Cup is possible. If he can stay fit, he’ll be one of the best players there.
