Possible Space
Messi in Miami
There is a quote from Arthur C. Clarke which is famous enough that you may have heard it even if you are not interested in science fiction. It goes “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” It’s the last and most-referenced of what became known as Clarke’s three laws. Comparatively, the second law is less well-known, but in this case it may be just as applicable: “The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.” If you are reading this, you have likely also heard that Lionel Messi has come to Miami, Florida, and to Cincinnati, Ohio, and to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
You could argue, and I would, that there is a kind of magic in sports, at every level, all the time. Or at least that, beyond the corrupt bureaucracies and cutthroat competition and misplaced priorities, there are profound joys lurking underneath it all somewhere. Whether six-year-olds committing a series of basic fielding errors until they compound into a classic tee ball home run, or the best athletes alive contorting their bodies to thwart physics, there are infinite variations on what can be conjured. But statistically, the more grandiose of these enchantments are relatively rare. Anyone who watches any sport regularly knows this. Every player can not be the greatest of all time. The underdog can’t always pull off the unlikely upset. Even the dominant favorite can’t always win beautifully. Whole games will pass where it’s difficult to remember a single highlight. Over a long season or career or the existence of a team, a lot of what happens will tend towards the mundane, or depending on your luck in fandom, sometimes the aesthetically painful.
Plenty of what Inter Miami has done over the last month has been mundane, but in between that Messi’s tenure so far there does not seem to be bound by these usual statistical constraints. Perhaps it is naive to be shocked that arguably the greatest player in the history of the sport, even at thirty-six years old and over twenty seasons into his professional career, could summon up something otherworldly and yet here we are. Owner David Beckham’s cheeky grin has grown impossibly cheekier by the fixture. Taylor Twellman, trying to announce his way through disbelief, has seemingly had his brain melted. Ray Hudson, in his one chance to narrate this fable so far, did what Ray Hudson always does, but this time it felt like a few moments might actually be worthy of the hyperbole.
For all its recent improvements, Major League Soccer is not in the same universe as La Liga or Ligue Un. The newly formatted Leagues Cup, where for some reason the Liga MX teams had to play all their games as visitors, is not even the CONCACAF Champions League, let alone the UEFA version. In part due to the nature of their roster construction rules, MLS teams tend to spend on attacking stars and worry about solid defenses as an afterthought.
Especially in its earlier days, MLS has been derided as a league for former international heroes to come pick up a last paycheck, improve their brand visibility, and style on journeyman centerbacks before retirement. Plenty of other aging stars have authored mythical performances in the league. Beckham himself hit seven free kicks for the LA Galaxy. Zlatan, more or less fresh off the plane, scored one of the purest strikes you will ever see to lead a comeback for the same club. Wayne Rooney sprinted fifty yards back to make a game saving tackle, turned around and launched a majestic assist to Luciano Acosta for the winning header in stoppage time, and then doubled over, too exhausted from the effort to even celebrate. All that said, and with all due respect to Red Bulls era Thierry Henry, I have never seen anything quite like this. The technology appears to be advanced beyond my understanding. We are out past the limits.
For those who were not paying attention to the bottom of MLS’s Eastern Conference standings before the announcement of the GOAT’s arrival, Miami was not in a good place. Last in the table, not only in the conference but the entire league (they do have a few games in hand) they parted ways with coach Phil Neville in June. Heading into the break for the Leagues Cup, which would mark Messi’s first appearance, they were 5W-3D-14L with a -14 goal differential and without a win in a league match since May 13th. Given the longshot of making the MLS playoffs and the timing of Messi’s arrival, the Leagues Cup and the Lamar Hunt Open Cup, which they were somehow miraculously still alive in, seemed like their best chance to salvage a morale boost and build for next year.
Beyond Messi, Miami brought in former Atlanta, Mexico, and notably Barcelona manager Tata Martino to replace Neville. They somehow (your credulity on this may vary) found the salary cap flexibility to add Messi’s former Barcelona compatriots Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba. It was widely assumed that, surrounded by familiar pieces and MLS defenses, even a diminished Messi on a troubled team could make an enormous, immediate impact. Even given those expectations, what followed reads as farfetched. I am recapping it here, because some of the wonder is in these details, which brisk summaries risk taking for granted.
After subbing in to his debut Leagues Cup game against Cruz Azul, Messi buries a free kick in stoppage time, to win the game 2–1. Pandemonium ensues.
By twenty-two minutes into the next game against Atlanta he has two more goals. Four-nothing final. Robert Taylor, who has played for ten different teams since 2011, suddenly looks like a world-beater.
Two Messi volleys vs. Orlando City, one assisted by Taylor and the other by a re-energized Josef Martinez. 3–1. Is this really happening?
In his first away game in the Texas heat, Dallas leads 4–2 in the 68th minute. Not enough. Messi hits another top corner free kick to tie the game, takes and makes the first penalty in the shootout, and a Drake Callender save puts Miami through. Imagine the 1983 NC State title run if NC State had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on the roster.
Back at home vs. Charlotte, a 4–0 steamrolling. His coworkers look like they have never had a better time at their jobs.
Away for the semifinal against a very good Philadelphia. 4–1 and it is not close. Messi catches Andre Blake backpeddling and burns in a roller from 32 meters. He is slower, and doing an exaggerated version of his shuffling energy-conservation run/walk, but he is still seeing everything in the matrix.
The Leagues Cup final is at the notoriously disciplined Nashville. Miami look uncomfortable and have trouble getting Messi touches. A loose rebound bounces to him anyway, which elicits an “uh oh” from the booth. A Walker Zimmerman tackle gets a piece of the ball but can’t even slow Messi down. 1–0. Nashville, seemingly the better team, equalize. Penalties, again, and, again, Messi slots home the first. It goes all the way to the keepers. Callander outduels Panicco, and Miami are Leagues Cup champions. Messi has ten goals to lead the tournament, five from outside the box, and has brought home silverware already. Miami score twenty-two in the tournament, as many as they had in the entire MLS season preceding it. But the run is not over yet.
Days later, Miami travel to Cincinnati for the Open Cup semifinal against the best team in MLS. Miami looks tired — they should! They are old, and not rotating very much, and it has been a lot of games. Cincinnati has more firepower and 53 minutes in they are up 2–0. The ride, at least the euphorious introductory phase of it, has to end at some point, of course, but then Messi crosses a free kick onto Campana’s head and they are only down one. They hang around long enough to warp the realm of possibility.
Seven minutes into extra time when everyone looks spent and it is all but over, Miami plink it around to Messi in the midfield and he glances up a couple of times. His lizard brain, which is not exactly like your or my lizard brain, works the geometry and he drops a ball behind the defense onto Campana’s head again and it is tied. Martinez scores in extra time; Kubo answers back. More penalties. For the third shootout straight, Messi scores the opener, for the third shootout straight Callender comes up big, and Miami wins it again. They are on to another final.
I don’t disagree with Billy Haisley that in the grand scheme of top tier world football, or of Messi’s previous accomplishments, that “none of this is very serious.” But I do hope that it doesn’t get lost in the (not altogether unreasonable) disdain for the level of play in the MLS, that we’re witnessing a specific type of outlandishness that I’m not sure our sciences are evolved enough to explain. Great players have transferred over from other leagues and put up gaudy numbers, and middle-aged superstars have checked in for retirement tours where they feasted on unprepared back lines, but this feels like a conjuration all its own, maybe specific to a single person who has ever lived.
I don’t know how long he can keep it up, or if in a few weeks they will come back down to earth and we’ll be watching Miami get plastered by a very poor Toronto team. I don’t know when the talent and sheer competitive will to win won’t be enough to keep all the plates spinning any longer. After a few film sessions, teams are bound to start recognizing the world’s most famous footballer and at least attempting to guard him, even if it does look like he is only walking around. Maybe he will get old at some point mid-season, or maybe he is simply too good for that in a league like this, and time won’t catch up to him before he gets bored and calls it a day. I don’t have any of the answers because I don’t understand how any of this works. It doesn’t require the blueprints to know that this all feels at least a little bit magical, and that’s not always the easiest sensation to get a hold of. If you catch a glimpse of someone pushing on the bounds of what’s possible, it’s worth sticking around to watch where it goes.
