Messi was already a hit in Miami. Then he stepped onto the field

Since Lionel Messi announced in early June that he intended to make a stunning jump to Major League Soccer for the twilight of his career, he has flipped the world of his new team, Inter Miami, upside down and shined an enormous spotlight on South Florida. Considered perhaps the greatest football player of all time, Messi brought an unprecedented amount of attention to a team that was in only its fourth season and mired in last place.

And when Messi was fouled near the top of the penalty box in the third minute of added time in his highly anticipated debut on Friday, he had a chance to prove once again why he was worth all of this hoopla, money and adulation. As he lined up for the free kick in the waning seconds of the game, the crowd of 20,512 at DRV PNK Stadium wondered if he could author another unforgettable moment in an already storied career.

The answer: of course. With his golden left foot, Messi drilled a shot into the top left corner of the net, providing the winning difference in a 2-1 victory over Mexican team Cruz Azul that seemed surreal but also quite fitting. “A tremendous joy to get our first victory after how we’ve been doing in the league,” Messi said in Spanish in a postgame television interview.

Teammate Kamal Miller said it best when he noted that it was “crazy how that the whole crowd expected the ball to go right there, and he put it right there.”

He added later, “We all had that feeling that if anyone could pull off something of that magnitude, that’s the right man.”

This is the power of Messi. Before he agreed to come here, Inter Miami was perhaps best known for a cheating scandal in 2021. And this season, Miami had not won since May 23, a span of 11 games. But Messi, 36, has already made an instant impact on and off the field.

Messi, who led Argentina to World Cup glory in December and has claimed seven Ballons d’Or as the world’s best men’s football player, isn’t just an iconic athlete who has reached almost mythical proportions. He already has and likely will continue to have a substantial cultural influence on a city — and region — known as the unofficial capital of Latin America. Restaurants have changed their menus to include Messithemed dishes. Murals and signs of Messi have popped up everywhere.

Argentine culture is spreading through him.

“The magnitude of this announcement — no matter how much I’ve prepared, envisioned, dreamed — is mindblowing,” said Jorge Mas, a Cuban American billionaire and South Florida native who is the managing owner of Inter Miami. “You’d have to live in a cave to not know that Leo Messi is an Inter Miami player, no matter where in the world.”

Look no further than the demand for tickets.

Granted, Inter Miami plays in a stadium about 30 miles north of downtown Miami that has a listed capacity of 19,000 and is a placeholder until a proposed larger venue next to Miami International Airport is expected to be completed in two years.

But the prices for many tickets to Messi’s first Inter Miami game jumped over $300 from roughly $40. As he acclimated to a new team, Messi didn’t start the game — part of a new monthlong tournament between MLS and Liga MX called Leagues Cup — but it was a sellout anyway. From the beginning of the game, long before he stepped onto the field as a substitute in the 54th minute, fans had been chanting his name. The average ticket price on the secondary market for Inter Miami’s remaining home games skyrocketed to $850 from $152, with road games seeing an even bigger jump, according to Ticket IQ.

While some fans have gotten their hands on a Messi Inter Miami jersey, the items are hard to come by online. A note on Inter Miami and MLS official stores, which are run by sports apparel retailer Fanatics, said that Adidas, the league’s official jersey supplier, would be “delivering this product in mid October.” The MLS regular season ends around then. (Adidas did not respond to a request for comment.)

According to Fanatics, since Messi’s new jersey launched Monday, Inter Miami has been its top-selling team across all sports. The company said Thursday that it had sold more Inter Miami merchandise since Monday than in the previous 7 1/2 months of 2023.

For Messi’s presentation event Sunday — which was broadcast globally in English and Spanish on Apple TV+, MLS’ firstyear streaming partner — nearly 500 media members were credentialed, according to Inter Miami. And nearly 200 were approved for Messi’s first practice, with a news helicopter circling above since early that morning. Even though reporters were given access to only 15 minutes of the training session, which is common in the sport, television and radio reporters from Argentina broadcast live from their spots on the other side of the field, and then later from the parking lot.

“That’s a gift that Leo has given the sport,” said David Beckham, a former football star and an Inter Miami owner. “It’s about legacy for him. He’s at the stage of his career where he’s done everything that any football player can do in the sport.”