Inter Miami manager Javier Mascherano, left, talks to Lionel Messi #10 before entering the pitch during the 2025 Concacaf Champions Cup Round of 16 Second Leg match at Cavalier SC on March 13.
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As Inter Miami tries to keep its hopes of repeating as Supporters’ Shield champions alive and then eyes a potential first MLS Cup title in the playoffs that follow, one clear pattern is emerging when comparing the Herons’ current team to that of 2024.
Under first-year manager Javier Mascherano, this year’s version is far more reliant on Messi as a scorer.
Yes, it would be weird if any team wasn’t at least somewhat reliant on a player whom many consider the greatest to ever play at the game.
But the numbers this season compared to last suggest a Herons squad that isn’t nearly as good as turning to Plan B when Plan A of leaning on the eight-time Ballon d’Or winner scores doesn’t work out.
Inter Miami’s 2024 record …
- When Messi scored: 8W-4D-1L
- When Messi didn’t score: 5W-2D-0L
- When Messi didn’t play: 9W-2D-3L
Inter Miami’s 2025 record so far …
- When Messi scored: 13W-2D-1L
- When Messi didn’t score: 1W-4D-3L
- When Messi didn’t play: 2W-2D-2L
Whether on purpose or by accident, it’s an impossible trend to shrug off how different the numbers are.
Determining why that disparity has emerged – and even determining whether it’s even a negative – is more complicated.
What Exactly Changed?
The immediate impulse is to point out what else is different the difference in head coaching.
Mascherano is in his first senior head coaching role. Previous gaffer Tata Martino was as experienced as they come. So you might infer that Martino was simply at utilizing his supplementary players and making adjustments when Messi had an off night or was unavailable. And maybe that’s even true.
But there’s also more subtle factors that are as likely to be influential.
There’s the passage of time and the aging of Miami’s veteran core. While Messi hasn’t showed much sign of precipitous decline after turning 38 – and has also been healthier over the season so far than in 2024 – both Luis Suarez and Sergio Busquets have seemed to slide considerably from their 2024 levels. Busquets has already announced he’s retiring at the season’s end, and the 38-year-old Suarez’s future remains uncertain.
There’s also the turnover of Miami’s supplemental pieces, in general skewing away from those with MLS experience. Kamal Miller, Julian Gressel and Leonardo Campana are among those who were contributors to Miami during the 2024 season who were jettisoned since.
That could also trace back to the theory of the team being shaped more to Messi’s liking, with a plurality of the roster now having South American connections. But it’s also normal for an incoming manager and sporting director to have different ideas about personnel regardless of who the team’s star player is.
Pros And Cons
The drawbacks of having a team more reliant on a single 38-year-old are fairly obvious.
It makes earning consistent results over a long period more challenging, even when Messi is healthy. As prolific as he has been in 2025 – scoring an MLS-leading 24 goals and adding 14 assists in his 24 league appearances, even he can’t be expected to score in every match he plays. If Miami falls short of winning back-to-back Supporters’ Shield titles, that model of more reliance on Messi may be one reason to blame. And if he succumbs to any sort of injury for even a small portion of the playoffs, Miami’s postseason could be in real jeopardy.
But a game model that goes all in on your best player might actually be the better idea if your goal is to get hot at the right time. Knockout play is often more about determining who has the best positive momentum over a short period rather than who sustains excellence the longest.
The MLS Cup Playoff schedule also might bring less injury risk for Messi because the volume of matchesrelatively to time is less demanding. The championship-winning team could play as many as seven games total, but over a far more manageable stretch of roughly 40 days. Realisitically, Messi and Miami could win their first MLS Cup in only five matches between approximately Oct. 25 and the MLS Cup final on Dec. 6.
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