Lionel Messi Keeps Mixing Business With Pleasure—It’s No Longer a Smart Choice

Can you ever have “too much” Lionel Messi?

Perhaps that’s a crazy question to ask about an eight-time Ballon d’Or winner, but it may be one reaching Inter Miami’s minds right now.

Since Messi arrived, the South Florida club has increasingly built itself around the people the soccer legend enjoys, trusts and is most comfortable with, using him as a North Star for everything they do. At first, that strategy produced trophies, but it’s now bringing diminishing returns and has seemingly lost all notion of the stakes at hand. If anything, it’s more about personal preference.

Messi is without a doubt Miami’s best player. He is the highest-paid star in MLS and reportedly has stakes in the league’s broadcasting deal with Apple TV and the potential to co-own Inter Miami after he retires. It makes his influence unparalleled—and he’s used it to pave a new path to MLS for the global legends of the game around him.

At the club level, though, it has stopped working and could potentially be holding the Herons back from becoming a true global giant.

The Coaching Carousel

Javier Mascherano, Lionel Messi — Javier Mascherano (right) was inexperienced, but became demanding of Lionel Messi (left). | Greg Fiume/MLS/Getty Images

This week, amid a five-game winless skid, Miami announced that Kily González would take over at the helm, relieving interim manager Guillermo Hoyos of his duties once U.S. work visas are approved for González and his staff. González has known Messi for years, similar to Hoyos, and hails from the same hometown of Rosario, Argentina. The two also played together with La Albiceleste.

But he, like others before him, has little positive coaching experience and seemingly landed the position solely for his personal relationship with Messi.

González has a win percentage of 32.5% through his three previous club roles and has never won a trophy. In comparison, Hoyos had a 39% winning percentage coming to Miami, albeit with far more experience. And Javier Mascherano before him? Well, he had never coached a senior side.

Another day on the training ground 🫡⚽️ pic.twitter.com/pSybA6sWMJ
— Inter Miami CF (@InterMiamiCF) August 26, 2026

The three—even Mascherano, who went on to lead Miami to the MLS Cup just nine months ago—would be unlikely to land an interview for another team in the league.

Will González be any different? Or will he simply be the latest chapter in an Inter Miami project that seems to have lost its direction, too focused on the Messi aspect (or rather, appeasement), as opposed to building a winning team?

On Friday, Hoyos—who is suspended for Saturday’s game against CF Montréal— admitted that he believes Messi should have a role in the hirings around the club. It’s unsurprising to hear that sentiment from a man who has relentlessly complimented Messi throughout his career and landed the job largely because of his history as Messi’s “football godfather.” Nevertheless, it doesn’t serve as a normal operations process for a team seeking collective success.

González Will Need to Thread the Messi Needle

Kily González has never managed outside of Argentina. | Marcelo Endelli/Getty Images

González now faces an immense challenge of producing a winning record for the first time in his managerial career and doing so while working with a deeply-flawed roster. With 14 goals and nine assists in 18 games, Messi has been good this season—but it’s no longer enough to save a Miami side that is missing too many pieces.

And González has to do it without frustrating Messi—the reported cause for the fractured relationship between Mascherano and Messi and reason behind the MLS Cup-winning coach taking the exit door.

It’s a tough needle to thread: pleasing Messi while also dragging along a roster with little flexibility to improve. Hoyos alluded to this precarious balance, albeit couching it in compliments for his soccer godson.

“We have a great team, some wonderful young players and the best player in the history of soccer,” Hoyos said on Friday, after the news of his dismissal dropped. “He’s the best player, and we have to support him in every way so he can express himself, because he does it in a way nobody else can. Nobody plays soccer the way he does.”

González’s Necessary Fixes

Casemiro is among the players who need to improve. | Rich Storry/Getty Images

González likely won’t get the opportunity to make moves in the summer transfer window set to close on Wednesday, which means he will have to turn the page with the roster he already has, in hopes of maintaining a top-two spot in the Eastern Conference and making a run towards the MLS Cup.

The key to that will be getting Messi levelheaded in his approach. With the death of Jorge Messi, Lionel’s father, so soon after Argentina lost the 2026 World Cup final, it has not been an easy time for the legendary No. 10—but the priority will have to be keeping him at his best and pushing him as a leader within the group.

González hasn’t had immense success as a manager, but he will likely try to implement an aggressive and direct style, pushing Casemiro and Yannick Bright to lead the way in midfield. He’ll need more out of Casemiro than what the Brazilian has offered in a pedestrian five MLS matches, and Bright will need to return to his 2025 form as well.

Once the core of the team is sorted, box-to-box midfielder Telasco Segovia can inject the energy. Meanwhile, Rodrigo De Paul, Luis Suárez and German Berterame will need to increase their tempo to fit what could be a more demanding system.

Hoyos’s exit seems appropriate given the team’s recent struggles, yet the same issues that faced him will likely haunt González. Unless the new boss can prove his arrival was a true act of business, rather than simply pleasure, Messi may be destined for just his second trophy-less year in more than two decades.

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