Why Inter Miami And Lionel Messi Deserve A FIFA Club World Cup Spot

Inter Miami’s qualification for the FIFA Club World Cup has been met with accusations that it was gifted a place due to the presence of Lionel Messi, and that it did nothing to deserve taking the United States host spot at the upcoming tournament.

But even though Messi’s presence is convenient for the marketing of this new expanded version of FIFA’s club tournament, and the decisions around how the host team would qualify seemed to drag on until Inter Miami won something, to say Messi’s Major League Soccer team didn’t deserve a place at the Club World Cup on merit, is wrong.

Inter Miami topped the Eastern Conference and the overall MLS table at the end of 2024 to claim the Supporters’ Shield title. What’s more, it did so in record-breaking fashion, racking up the highest ever points total for a Supporters’ Shield winner with 74.

Messi was named the league’s MVP, putting up ridiculous numbers despite missing a chunk of the middle of the season for the 2024 Copa America, which Argentina won, and then through injury.

He still finished the regular season as the joint-second highest goalscorer with 20, and with the most goals and assists combined on 31. His goals per 90 minutes average stood at a remarkable 1.21.

The best, or at least the most consistent team overall in MLS in 2024, was Inter Miami, and the league table, despite MLS’s unbalanced schedule, was evidence of that. The team also boasted the league’s best player for good measure.

A team shouldn’t qualify for a tournament just because it has Messi, though. The criteria should be on pitch performance, not marketing potential. And if FIFA was looking for marketing potential, it would have found a way to shoehorn the likes of Liverpool, Manchester United, and Barcelona into the mix, but those big draws will not be participating.

For its many faults, and the deserved criticism of the off-field issues around this Club World Cup, the qualification process kind of makes sense—as much as a qualification period of four years from multiple seasons between 2021 and 2024 can.

This is not about who won a high-profile domestic league most recently, as Liverpool and Barcelona both did, it’s about who won continental honors in the previous four seasons.

It makes sense that continental tournaments are qualified for via domestic performance; therefore, it makes sense that a global tournament would be qualified for based on continental performance.

When choosing the host, however, the decision at previous Club World Cups tends to be based on who topped the table in the domestic league. This was the deciding factor once again when deciding which team from the United States would get the host nation spot.

The problem was, this method of qualification wasn’t announced until after Inter Miami had won the Supporters’ Shield. It was easy to be sceptical.

Another complication is that, in MLS, the champion of a particular season is considered to be the winner of the post-season playoffs—the MLS Cup—not the team that tops the league table at the end of the regular season.

The winner of the 2024 MLS Cup was LA Galaxy, which won four games in the postseason playoffs to be crowned champions.

In the regular season table, the Galaxy finished behind Inter Miami, Columbus Crew, and Los Angeles FC and narrowly missed out on topping their Western Conference to Los Angeles FC.

LA Galaxy’s 2024 season was a memorable one in which the likes of Riqui Puig, Gabriel Pec, and Joseph Paintsil lit up the league. It was a year to savour for its fans and went some way to rewarding those supporters whose protests in previous seasons had played a part in the team’s turnaround by giving the front office a wake-up call.

The Galaxy certainly had a case for a Club World Cup place, as did Los Angeles FC, which won the United States’ domestic cup, the U.S. Open Cup, in 2024.

Given that the Open Cup involves U.S. teams only, and MLS includes three Canadian sides, that cup win alone gave Los Angeles FC a case to call itself U.S. domestic champion for 2024 and claim the host spot.

Incidentally, it would have been interesting to see what FIFA would have done had a Canadian team won the Supporters’ Shield and the MLS Cup in 2024.

Columbus Crew has also been a standout team in MLS over the past couple of years, and won last season’s Leagues Cup tournament that pits MLS teams against each other and teams from Mexico’s Liga MX. They had also won the Supporters’ Shield in 2023.

Inter Miami also has a Leagues Cup win from 2023, shortly after Messi’s arrival.

Now coached by Javier Mascherano, Inter Miami has been inconsistent in MLS so far this season, but is still only four points off the top of the Eastern Conference with a game in hand.

LA Galaxy, on the other hand, sits bottom of the overall standings with just one win in 17 games. It has been a post-MLS Cup collapse, and the defence of that title already appears to be over.

Though Messi and the controversy around Inter Miami’s inclusion have dominated the MLS-related narrative around this tournament, the league will be well represented at the Club World Cup and boasts three teams in total.

Seattle Sounders are there courtesy of a historic Concacaf Champions League win in 2022, while Los Angeles FC benefited from a controversial multi-club ownership mixup, which saw Club León kicked out.

A playoff between Club America and Los Angeles FC decided León’s replacement, and it’s apt that the 2024 U.S. Open Cup winner eventually qualified.

Though other teams had good arguments for inclusion as the host team, the qualification criteria should have been known sooner, and it is convenient for FIFA that Messi is present, it cannot be said that Inter Miami didn’t win its Club World Cup place on merit given its record breaking trophy win in 2024.

Messi and co. open the tournament at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami on Saturday night against a giant of Egyptian and African soccer, Al Ahly.