For over a decade, it was assumed within MLS circles that any team that could lure Lionel Messi would immediately be a shoo-in to win every trophy on offer.
Such was the individual prowess of the Argentine, a player so nimble and game-breaking that the league’s notoriously shaky defenses would be unable to contain him. It’s a lucrative bet that Inter Miami ultimately placed in July 2023, changing the league when it acquired Messi and some of his closest friends and former Barcelona teammates — Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba; Luis Suárez joined six months later. And yet, here Miami is: nearly 24 months into Messi’s tenure with just a Supporters’ Shield and Leagues Cup trophy to show for its outlay.
Earlier this month, Miami’s quest to win the 2025 Concacaf Champions Cup was thwarted at the semifinal stage by the Vancouver Whitecaps. It gave manager Javier Mascherano, another longtime ally of Messi’s who took over as manager this winter, his first real setback. In truth, Miami doesn’t seem to have recovered, nor has it put itself in a position to defend last year’s Shield.
Miami began April with the first leg of a Champions Cup quarterfinal against Los Angeles FC, losing 1-0 before swinging the result at home in the second leg. Nevertheless, the defeat was the start of a serious downturn in form; Miami has won just three of its last 11 games in all competitions, suffering five losses and three draws despite having all four of its veteran legends available for the majority of the time.
In possession, Miami still looks like a team that can contend on all fronts. Thus far, Mascherano has tried having his team press higher upfield, aiming to spend more time in the final third while asking his attack to press more from the front. It’s working to an extent: Miami is winning 4.9 possessions in the attacking third per game, up from 3.9 a year ago under Tata Martino. This has resulted in a slightly better field tilt — that is, possession only considering attacking-third touches — as Miami’s rate of 52.5 percent is just ahead of last year’s 50.8 percent clip.
However, Miami is struggling to get shots off. Its open-play chance creation has dropped from 8.1 per game a year ago to just 6.6 through 12 regular season matches. Stylistically, it leaves the team with a lot of the ball and not much intentionality — Miami averages 55.3 completed passes per unblocked shot attempt, the fourth-loftiest rate of any MLS team. Granted, that’s far more of a stylistic indicator than anything, but it’s worth noting that the three teams that need even more passes to generate an attempt are all comfortably outside of MLS’s playoff positions.
Still, ball retention can serve as a form of defending. Every touch taken eats up precious time that might otherwise aide an opponent to launch its own attacks.
What’s tricky is that the higher lines of defensive engagement open up space for the other team to enter when the ball changes hands — and, after a winter that required plenty of transactions to comply with MLS roster rules as the squad was recalibrated for Mascherano, it’s exactly what’s causing Miami to drop result after result this spring.
In any league with a salary cap, the price of success is considerable roster turnover thereafter. It’s part of why the LA Galaxy are struggling mightily after winning MLS Cup, turning what would’ve already been a tough year as Riqui Puig recovers from a torn ACL into an all-time miserable start.
Many of Miami’s departures were the type of selfless off-ball runners and auxiliary creators that left Messi and Suárez to feast in dangerous areas. Gone are midfielder Diego Gómez (sold to Brighton), midfielder Julian Gressel (now with Minnesota United), winger Robert Taylor (traded to Austin FC), and vital fast-break operators Matías Rojas (free transfer to River Plate) and Leo Campana (traded to New England). Each played valuable roles as the team won the Shield in 2024, either across the full season or in sustained stretches of the calendar.
Gressel’s departure seemed especially tough to replace. The 31-year-old was dropped from Mascherano’s plans entirely and left to train with the reserves until he joined Minnesota via the league’s waivers process at the end of the primary transfer window. Gressel is an expert reader of space, a two-time MLS Cup winner and a versatile player who can tuck into midfield or operate as a right-sided wingback. He was also Miami’s third-leading chance creator, trailing only Alba and Messi.
In his absence, even more is being asked of Alba to create from the left flank. This is going to get ugly quick, so let’s establish this: Alba can still offer valuable support on the left wing. He’s taking just under 2.5 percent more of his touches in the final third, staying more advanced as his pace continues to wane. His progressive carry rate has dipped year-over-year since joining in 2023, from 17.5 percent of his first year’s carries advancing at least five yards closer to goal, to 13.6 percent last season to just 11.9 percent in 2025 to date. His 73.9 percent pass accuracy in the final third is his highest rate since his last year in La Liga (2022-23), and 46.7 percent of his chances created register as ‘big’ chances. Opta defines these as any situation where the receiver of a created chance should reasonably be expected to score.
The flipside of this coin isn’t nearly as pretty. Stationed as the left back in a back-four, those increasingly common wide-playmaking runs pull him out of defensive position to an extent that’s become a downright liability — and, arguably, the biggest weakness for opponents to exploit.
Through a dozen MLS games, Miami concedes 8.4 chances per game; 30.7 percent of those register as ‘big’ chances. That’s prodigiously steep for any defense to allow. No team in MLS concedes ‘big’ chances at a higher rate, with the average MLS side allowing 18.9 percent of those meaty opportunities.
A lot of those big chances are coming down Miami’s defensive left, as teams exploit Alba’s advanced positioning and further stretch the rest of Miami’s defensive line, often with only three defenders and Busquets staying back. Most often, it’s left-sided center back Noah Allen — a 21-year-old academy product — who mops up the space vacated by Alba.
Nevertheless, it creates ample real estate from which opponents can set up shop. With Alba’s average defensive action coming near the center line, roughly a third of all chances created by Miami’s opponents come in typical left back country.
To a degree, it would be understandable if teams were finding it so easy to exploit this space in transition phases, when Alba would be trailing behind the play after serving as a chief facilitator. The Spaniard turned 36 in March, and his recovery defensive runs haven’t been a hallmark of his play since joining Miami. What’s concerning from Mascherano’s perspective, however, is that his two damning gaffes against Minnesota came in more established game states: the first from a goal kick, the second from a throw-in.
Breaking down the film
Miami starts the game in the driver’s seat, putting Minnesota’s back line under constant duress. As Gressel told The Athletic after the match, this was to be expected. Mascherano has urged his team to be the aggressors from the opening window, but Gressel noticed that the team tends to switch off around the 30-minute mark, especially if it has yet to open the scoring.
That’s the case in the following sequence, with Minnesota goalkeeper Dayne St. Clair playing the ball to Michael Boxall, who shunts it wide to Jefferson Díaz. Alba advances upfield, well ahead of the rest of his defensive peers to play level with Busquets near the midfield’s base. Díaz spots an opening near the center and lobs a ball between the midfield and Busquets.
Alba pursues it with the singular focus of a dog fixated on a frisbee.
The pass’ target spots Busquets as he approaches and nods the ball into the path of Bongi Hlongwane. With Alba far afield, Minnesota suddenly has a three-on-three break mere seconds after the restart.
It’s no small feat that Alba is able to catch up to Hlongwane as he enters his stride. The South African is among the fastest forwards in MLS, and the veteran is able to briefly slow his opponent’s momentum.
That is, until Hlongwane reaches into his bag of tricks and executes a spin move around the defender and into open grass within the channel.
From here, Allen picks up on Minnesota midfielder Robin Lod’s run and occupies the space that should be covered by Alba. The Spaniard recognizes the switch and drops into Allen’s position as the ball advances to the edge of the box.
Lod is able to draw two additional Miami players’ focus, freeing up Hlongwane and other teammates to find open space at the edge of the area. He starts to converge into the box, but recirculates the ball within the corner to another midfielder, Argentine creator Joaquín Pereyra.
Inexplicably, Alba loses interest in playing as an ad hoc center back, drifting to an area that’s already full of pink jerseys.
As Pereyra turns, he has two clear passing lanes available to bypass four Miami defenders. He could send it up the line to Díaz, now fully advanced as the sequence’s ball-playing center back, for a clear byway toward Lod and Carlos Harvey. Instead, he splits the seam left by Alba’s half-hearted commitment to the press, finding Harvey at the corner of the box with the Loons again enjoying a numerical advantage.
It’s all too easy for the Panama international, who slips the ball in the vacuous space left unoccupied by Alba and Allen’s miscommunication.
All Alba is left to do is beg for the sweet reprieve of the offside flag — but he’s keeping Hlongwane onside. Hlongwane’s nimble spin move during the build-up is rewarded with an open shot across the frame of goal.
Miami is able to keep the game within one goal until stoppage time, when Minnesota has an attacking third throw-in. No team in MLS is better at long box throws than the Loons: their average of 3.5 box throws per game is nearly double the rate of any other team in the league, and well above the league-wide average of 0.6 per game.
Boxall, Minnesota’s captain (and New Zealand’s World Cup qualifying hero), has a knack for launching it into the mixer, and he does so here.
The ball falls onto the head of Minnesota defender Nicolás Romero, who flicks it toward the far post.
Bizarrely, not a single one of Miami’s eight players inside the box leaves his feet, an entire flock of flightless Herons. Alba is supposed to be marking the far post but can’t fight his instinct to converge and allows Minnesota left wingback Anthony Markanich to drift toward the post unmarked.
Despite being listed at 6ft 1in, Markanich isn’t known for his heading prowess. Across his first 3,069 MLS minutes since debuting in 2022, he had hadn’t scored a single headed goal. A week before the Miami match, against Austin, Markanich skied over an opponent to nod home a strike. His second headed goal comes far easier, without an ounce of duress from any opponent — Alba or otherwise.
As Markanich peels off to celebrate, Alba tries pantomiming a gingerly hop, as if his foot was stepped on by the scorer. Once again, he gets no sympathy from the linesman, and his team will now enter halftime trailing by two.
Minnesota goes on to win 4-1, Miami’s biggest defeat with Messi on the field and a result that left co-owner David Beckham policing the tone of the Loons’ social media manager.
Seemingly, Alba’s free-roaming approach is directly at odds with the job description for a left back in a four-man defensive line. Seldom is a fullback allowed to venture so freely into the final third, as it inevitably begs numerical disadvantages if the ball changes custody. Those frequent backtracks are a big ask for a defender of any age, but especially one who’s closer to 40 than 30.
One might think that means Miami is planning a succession for his position, yet the club announced Thursday that it had signed him to an extension through 2027 at a salary that will keep him in a valuable designated player slot.
Hlongwane and Markanich benefitted from Alba’s wanderlust, giving Minnesota a lead it would never relinquish even after Messi pulled back a consolation goal to open the second half. Equally concerning is the form of goalkeeper Oscar Ustari. A 38-year-old who won a gold medal with Messi at the 2008 Olympics, Ustari was initially signed as a veteran backup to Drake Callender. Under Mascherano — who was also part of that 2008 Argentina squad — Ustari has gotten the majority of starts, first by coach’s choice and now due to Callender having undergone surgery to repair a sports hernia.
Thus far, Ustari has been poor value when stopping shots. Simply studying the placement of the shots he’s faced, a worrying trend emerges. None of the 17 shots placed in the middle third of the goalmouth — where you’d expect a goalkeeper to spend most of his time — got past Ustari. Of the 19 that went to either the left or right thirds of frame, though, he only managed to keep eight from entering the net — a save percentage of just 42 percent.
Across 754 minutes, Ustari has faced 36 shots (4.3 per 90) and conceded 11 goals (1.31). While that yields a 67.6 percent save percentage that’s essentially identical to Callender’s rate of 67.5 percent last season, the type of goals that Ustari is conceding leads to a far worse “goals prevented” rate, which compares how many goals a goalkeeper actually concedes against the number he was expected to using expected goals on-target (or xGOT). His -1.8 goals prevented this season ranks him 28th among MLS’s 30 first-choice goalkeepers; when weighted for shot volume, he has a league-worst -14.7 percent goal prevention rate, considerably behind the league’s second-most porous netminder (the LA Galaxy’s John McCarthy, -9.8 percent).
Given Ustari’s general immobility in goal and Alba’s lackluster defending as a left back, it would behoove Miami to play with an additional defender. It would give an additional body in the box to cut down on opponents’ shooting lanes, while offering additional cover whenever Alba embarks on one of his trademark scampers into the attacking half.
This would come at the expense of the attacking and build-up, removing one of the players helping the team keep a narrow majority of attacking touches. It would heave more pressure on Messi and Suárez to carry the attack with less help in the final third and more youthful teammates around them. In turn, such a sacrifice going forward could make it easier for opponents to neutralize Miami’s technical prowess given the athletic limitations at such an advanced age.
In light of Alba’s apparently undroppable status, it’s hard to think of a more obvious solution that doesn’t risk benching Mascherano’s former-teammates-turned-pupils.
These are the trade-offs that Miami embraced as it retooled its squad this winter, losing several players entering or in their prime athletic years without cheaper alternatives entering in their place. It’s a mandatory recalibration that would give the most veteran of managers a headache. Considering this is Mascherano’s first club job, it may ultimately prove to be a puzzle too advanced for a novice coach to crack.
(Top photo: Jim Rassol/Imagn Images)
