Lionel Messi’s move to Miami brings joy, disbelief, and potential pitfalls

The Miami Heat were the runners-up in this month’s NBA finals, while the Florida Panthers reached the NHL’s Stanley Cup final down the road in Sunrise. And then there’s the small matter of Lionel Messi joining Inter Miami CF of MLS.

The 2022 World Cup winner will join his new teammates within weeks and locally there’s disbelief to accompany incredible excitement. It probably won’t feel real until Messi is pictured with the club’s co-owner, David Beckham, holding aloft a pink and black team scarf.

The announcements thus far have been strangely understated. Messi says he has “decided to continue the path in Miami” and the club confirmed his pending arrival via a cryptic Instagram post that went out to around a million followers. The account has since amassed another 7m followers. To put that number into context, the NFL’s most valuable franchise, the Dallas Cowboys, has 4.5m. Then again, Messi himself has half a billion. The opportunities this presents for the team and league are gigantic.

“It’s surreal, but it’s real. He is coming, even though they’re not saying much,” says Franco Panizo, of the Miami Total Futbol podcast. “It’ll feel more real when he gets here and when he plays his first game it’s going to be spectacular.

“Besides the cameras and the glitz and glamour, just seeing him on the field and the atmosphere in the stadium is going to be incredible. This is going to be transformative for Inter Miami.”

Local excitement even permeated the hyper-focused environment of the NBA finals. The Heat’s own global star Jimmy Butler, an enormous soccer fan, said: “I’m so excited for the city to have a player of that caliber here. Fans from all over the world are going to come here to watch him compete.”

Heat head coach Erik