In the mood Paris Saint-Germain were in, there were few teams from football’s highest echelons who would have been able to stay with them. There was nothing Inter Miami could have done to break up a move as intricate as that which ended with Joao Neves slotting in off an overlapping Fabian Ruiz for PSG’s second. That is not the same, however, as noting that Lionel Messi and company were particularly ill-suited to the challenge posed by the European champions.
One wonders if there were those at PSG who saw a few of the hallmarks of what amounted to the bad old days at the Parc des Princes, the team that seemed to have been built to satisfy the whims of a truly great footballer, who had no idea what to do without possession and were altogether too reliant on one or two players just doing something when they had it.
Inter Miami felt like a Lionel Messi team, just not the ones you remember most fondly. Instead, they were redolent of those last few years at Barcelona when he was carrying too heavy an offensive load, the weird PSG sojourn where all the attacking talent was on his side but the other team were playing as a unit.
Whatever the value Messi has brought to the American footballing project — and indeed to Inter Miami’s results in his time with the club — it is fair to note that catering for the great man has made for a team uniquely ill-suited to taking on the best teams in the world. Rather than surround Messi with the legs to do his running for him, the club hierarchy afforded the Argentine a chance to reunited with his 30-something mates.
If he could have a do-over, maybe Jorge Mas and David Beckham would have been better off funding a long weekend in the Hamptons for some Barcelona legends and then signing more dynamic players. By all accounts, the most appealing factors for Messi when he left PSG were life in Miami and the financial inducements from MLS partners. Would he have gone to Saudi Arabia because he couldn’t play with Jordi Alba?
Messi is still capable of staggering brilliance, a genius pass early in the second half teeing up Luis Suarez with a gorgeous first-time volley into the two or three yards of space between the PSG defense and the goal line. Maybe the younger Suarez could have volleyed it in first time. It would have been an inconsequential goal, but all the more delightful for it. In flashes, the old men of Inter Miami delivered a heady rush of nostalgia. Across 90 minutes, PSG showed how the game has advanced since Messi’s heyday.
The Argentine still has the facilities to excel at the top level; if he were to ever return to Europe’s big five leagues, he would surely light up a top side, especially with runners around him. Messi can still charm and dazzle you, but in Inter Miami pink, he has the look of the one-time lothario in the old people’s home. He had the moves; he just needed a little longer to get going.
That this only ended 4-0 probably said more of PSG’s reluctance to overexert themselves in the near-90-degree heat. From the moment Khvicha Kvaratskhelia glided to the left touchline, took his time to assess his options and rolled the ball to Bradley Barcola, smartly denied by Oscar Ustari, it was apparent the French side were in the mood to wrap this up quickly, To stem the tide, Inter Miami would have to get the basics right. They didn’t.
No one in pink seemed to take it on themselves to defend the back post, where Joao Neves, the smallest player on the pitch, sauntered in unmarked to flick home a header. They were lucky their sloppiness wasn’t punished twice, Barcola in the same position soon after, teeing up an offside Fabian Ruiz to turn into the net. This appears to be something of a pattern with Inter Miami, who concede the most set-piece goals per game in MLS this season.
Again, those characteristics of pre-Luis Enrique PSG rear their head. When Inter Miami were at Mercedes-Benz Stadium to play Atlanta United, it wouldn’t have been much of a problem if they were too passive out of possession, if they didn’t look to have been drilling set pieces during the week. They had a huge talent advantage at the top level; Messi or even Alba could just break the game apart in an instant, much like they had in Ligue 1 or La Liga.
They weren’t going to be doing that to PSG. Even one of the great Messi teams would have been pushed hard by Kvaratskhelia et al. Inter Miami’s bad cover version of Messi-ball was never going to make this a contest.
