How Inter Miami built, and Lionel Messi wooed, the greatest MLS team ever

The planning began when “Lionel Messi to Inter Miami” was still just a dream, an internet rumor discredited by insiders but sustained by a billionaire’s belief.

In the fall of 2022, as MLS clubs set out to build their 2023 rosters, Jorge Mas, Inter’s managing owner, was scheming. He’d been courting Messi ever since 2019, forging relationships with Messi’s entourage, planting seeds. By Year 4 of the pursuit, he was in Messi’s suite at the World Cup final, and “consistent in his confidence that this is gonna happen,” Inter Miami sporting director Chris Henderson says.

So, as chief soccer officers around the league were chasing stars in early 2023, and filling salary cap space to improve their teams, Miami … wasn’t. Some of its offseason moves puzzled observers. Designated Players left and weren’t really replaced. Pundits glanced at the remains, and (correctly) predicted that Inter would sink from sixth place in 2022 toward the bottom of the Eastern Conference in 2023.

But, “you know,” Henderson says now, “we had a plan.”

They were saving and making room for Messi — but also for a dozen other players who’d supplement the GOAT, and who, a year later, would propel Inter Miami to perhaps the greatest MLS season ever.

With Decision Day near, they stand on the rim of history, two points shy of the regular-season points record with one game to go. If they win it — on Saturday at home vs. New England (6:07 p.m. ET, AppleTV+) — they’ll finish on 74 points, an unprecedented haul in a league whose restrictive rules usually produce parity.

And if they do, Messi will be the primary reason. Equally remarkable and influential, though, is their record without him. The Herons, as Inter is nicknamed, took 32 points from 15 matches with Messi absent — or 2.13 points per game, nearly identical to their average in the 18 matches Messi has played.

They’ve been the league’s top team, with and without the GOAT, because they executed the plan, and assembled a peerless roster. It was a years-long process that required collaboration between ownership, executives and coaches, plus at least six other departments within the club.

And, of course, it required Messi, whose god-like pull made recruitment “much easier,” Henderson told Yahoo Sports in a phone interview.

Once Messi committed to Miami, up popped dozens of international players who, as Henderson says, “just want[ed] to come and play with him.”

Miami makes room for Messi

The process dates to 2021, when Henderson, an MLS lifer, took charge of Inter’s sporting department after 13 years in Seattle.

It accelerated in 2022 and 2023, as the end of Messi’s contract with Paris Saint-Germain neared. The possibility of luring him to Miami “affected all of our thought process in building and planning the team,” Henderson says. Messi had options — including PSG, Barcelona and Saudi Arabia — but Inter had only one: to construct a squad with a Messi-sized hole, one that could, in the dream scenario, be transformed almost overnight.

That meant, for example, acquiring Spanish playmaker Alejandro Pozuelo in July 2022, then letting his contract expire to free up a Designated Player (DP) slot. (Each MLS club is permitted to pay three DPs an uncapped salary that, no matter how lucrative, only counts $683,750 toward the cap. The rule, created to accommodate David Beckham in 2007, allowed Inter to afford Messi.)

Miami entered 2023 with only one true DP. Its second and third, forward Leonardo Campana and midfielder Gregore, were what Henderson calls “TAM-able.” Their relatively modest salaries gave Inter the flexibility to “buy down” their cap hits and make room for a new DP, if necessary.

To do that, an MLS club must tap into its pool of “allocation money.” (TAM is short for one type, Targeted Allocation Money.) Miami had already stockpiled significant sums, despite sanctions stemming from a cheating scandal. Then, in April 2023, it traded midfielder Bryce Duke and forward Ariel Lassiter to Montreal for defender Kamal Miller and, most importantly, $1.3 million in allocation money.

“And those were hard moves,” Henderson says. “Those were guys everyone liked, and they were good players. But … as we got closer to summer of ’23, we had to figure out ways that we could make room and maximize the summer transfer window.”