KANSAS CITY, MO — Have you seen Lionel Messi play live and in person? You should.
Even when he’s busy beating your hometown team – as he did on Saturday with a goal and an assist in a 3-2 win over Sporting Kansas City – you can’t help but watch his every move, laugh and just shrug. What? Do you have a plan to stop him? Okay.
The win puts Inter Miami on top as he heads into his first full season in MLS, touring the country and continent with three of his old Barcelona teammates and close friends. Next stop: KC. My hometown in the Midwest.
Through the ups and downs, a football city is born
The last time Sporting Kansas City – ahem, the Kansas City Wizards – played here, in the summer of 2010, 52,424 people showed up at Arrowhead Stadium for a friendly against Manchester United. That day was instrumental in reviving and relaunching one of the original MLS organizations.
It was only five years earlier that the sport was out of existence in this city, without a viable ownership group, and the team was nearly sold and moved to Rochester, New York. Now the sport is virtually inescapable in this city, where Sporting KC play to sold-out crowds in their own stadium week in and week out, having barely survived the downsizing and relocation era of MLS; where the NWSL’s Kansas City Current opened their own downtown stadium last month; where the 2024 Copa America and the 2026 World Cup will be played. Kansas City now has a legitimate claim to being ‘Soccer City USA’ and few can argue with that.
It wasn’t always this way. Believe me. I was there. Three years before the Man United friendly, the Wizards’ average attendance was 11,586 (about 15 percent capacity) during their final season at Arrowhead before moving to an independent ballpark for three years. Somehow it was an improvement. Not exactly a scene befitting the greatest player of all time, is it?
But Arrowhead is where the Wizards – ahem, the Wiz – played MLS’s first match in 1996. This league and this team have been around long enough to have a real “I remember when” history. At that time, the phrase “American football culture” had not yet been typed on the Internet, because American football culture did not yet exist. 28 years (to the day) and a few name changes later, American football culture is alive and well in the American heartland.
Lionel Messi takes over and leads Inter Miami past Sporting KC
There was even a moment on Saturday when Messi noticed this. Sure, 72,610 (95 percent capacity) filled the house of the two-time reigning Super Bowl champion Chiefs to lay their eyes on Messi, but he was just one of them, if only briefly, as Sporting KC winger Erik Thommy match of the match stormed. first goal from the edge of the penalty area in the 6th minute.
As the majority of the pro-Sporting KC crowd (although there were also thousands of pink and Albiceleste No. 10 shirts) roared to life, Messi looked towards the upper levels of Arrowhead and took in the scene. Perhaps he didn’t expect such a reaction in Central America – flyover country – and perhaps it was a trigger for what would happen next.
Twelve minutes later, Inter Miami were level thanks to a brilliant pass and assist that only Messi and teammate Diego Gomez could see. When Messi played the ball behind Sporting’s defense, there was not a black shirt in sight. “They’re not quite on the same page early in the season,” I thought, someone who should have known better. Don’t doubt the genius.
Maybe don’t give him five yards of space either when he’s 30 yards from goal or he’s liable to take two silky touches and slot them into the top corner in the blink of an eye. What a thing to see happening right before your eyes. If this is what he is capable of at 36, what must it have been like to witness 26-year-old Messi?
Messi mania, or a traveling circus? Maybe a little bit of both?
This sport has a way of making this big world not seem so big sometimes. Case in point: here’s Messi, the GOAT of GOATS, effortlessly displaying class and quality, and he’s doing it five minutes from where I grew up. I’d tell you to pinch me, but I don’t want to wake up having dreamed it all.
Luis Suarez then scored the winner after Thommy volleyed home for his second goal, not long after Messi’s stunner, but it was (fittingly and predictably) the Messi show from start to finish. He assisted, scored, posed for selfies with multiple pitch intruders in between Inter Miami’s frequent attacks during the second half, and did it all as if it was normal. That this game was played here, in this stadium, in front of all these people, was not unthinkable 15, 10, maybe even five years ago. But it speaks to the incredible growth of MLS in recent times – with Kansas City a shining example – that Messi has chosen to write the final chapter of his legendary career here.
This is All normal for him, of course – just another walk and a run around the park on a Saturday night – but even the best actors and actresses can’t perform without a good background, and Kansas City did more than its best to provide That. Unfortunately for the home fans, Messi delivered his standard star performance and walked away with all three points. Join the club.
Saturday evening was the full circle moment for the few thousand people who were there in those early days; a spectacle for the tens of thousands who fulfilled a decade-long dream to see the best thing ever with their own eyes; an unforgettable experience that most of us will probably only experience once in our lifetime. What a superpower.