Commentary: Lionel Messi and his star teammates were ousted, proving you can’t buy an MLS Cup

Forty-two million dollars can buy a lot of things, but apparently it can’t buy an MLS championship, because for the second time in as many seasons Inter Miami came up short in trying to spend its way to a league title.

This time it was Atlanta United, the lowest seed in the 18-team playoff field, a team that has played the last five months with an interim coach and one with a payroll less than half the size of Miami’s, who delivered the fatal blow, beating Lionel Messi’s team Saturday in the deciding game of a best-of-three, first-round playoff series.

That has wrecked the plans of MLS — which has all but rechristened itself Messi Soccer League — and its broadcast partners at Apple, who both were deeply invested in drawing a massive global audience for a league championship game with Messi at its center.

Cinderella, however, ruined the coronation by proving mentality is still more valuable than money, grit can still beat greed and the magic of pixie dust should never be underestimated.

“Grinding, man. Grinding. Believing. Resilient,” Atlanta’s ageless goalkeeper Brad Guzan, who stopped nine shots in the 3-2 win, said of his team’s performance. “There’s some fairy dust in our locker room.”

Guzan and his teammates weren’t the only ones celebrating because Miami’s loss opened a wide path for the MLS Cup to return to Southern California for the second time in three years. LAFC and the Galaxy are the highest remaining seeds in the playoff tournament, meaning if both win their Western Conference semifinals in two weeks, the title game will definitely be played here no matter who wins the conference final.

There’s also an upside to the upset for MLS.

The league’s overarching philosophy since its founding has been parity, a goal its byzantine salary rules were designed to support. And Miami’s loss — to a team whose salary is 35% of its payroll — means the best-paid team won’t win the MLS Cup for the seventh straight year and the 12th time in 13 seasons.

According to figures compiled by the Spotrac website, the last time the league’s highest-salaried team was also its best-performing one was in 2017, when Toronto won the only treble in MLS history with a payroll of $22.5 million. In the last six seasons, just one MLS champion — Columbus in 2020 — has ranked in the top three in spending. In a sport where cash often determines champions, that’s something MLS should be cheering.

Messi might be a World Cup champion — in addition to winning 10 La Liga titles, four Champions League crowns, three FIFA Club World Cups, two Ligue 1 titles, two Copa Américas and an Olympic gold medal — but he’s never lifted the MLS Cup.

This, too, is something the league should tout.

The best player in history comes to MLS, scores 21 goals and gets 18 assists in 25 regular-season games over a season and a half, but his team gets bounced in quarterfinals of the CONCACAF Champions Cup and the round of 16 in the Leagues Cup. It didn’t even make the playoffs last year.

Messi and Barcelona buddies Luis Suarez, Jordi Alba and Sergio Busquets have done much to raise the league’s profile and turn Inter Miami into a global brand. Now that spotlight can be used to highlight the strength and competitiveness of the league overall.

Even with the loss, it hasn’t been a totally lost season for Inter Miami since the team broke the league’s single-season points record and won the Supporters’ Shield, which goes to the team with the best record heading into the playoffs. That’s a trophy many players consider more important than MLS Cup since it recognizes excellence over a full reason rather than just the final six weeks.

Yet coach Tata Martino, who won an MLS Cup with Atlanta in 2018, isn’t interested in consolation prizes.

“It’s not a success when you lose in the quarterfinal round,” he told reporters after Saturday’s loss. “If one considers the expectations we had for these playoffs, we’ve come up very short.”

He was even more direct in an interview with the Athletic last August.

“When you win the MLS Cup, you earn that star above the badge,” he said. “The day that I’m given a star for winning the Supporters’ Shield, it’ll be worth it.”

Martino is now the third of three MLS coach-of-the-year candidates to lose in the first round of the playoffs. You know who hasn’t been eliminated? The actual best coaches of the year — the Galaxy’s Greg Vanney and LAFC’s Steve Cherundolo.

Vanney guided a Galaxy team that won just eight games last year to a record-tying season, one in which it matched modern-era franchise bests for wins (19) and goals (69). If it hadn’t conceded a score on the final touch of the regular season, the team would have won its first conference title since 2011 as well.

Cherundolo, whose rebuilt roster finished atop the conference table, is the only coach to take his team to two cup finals in 2024, winning the U.S. Cup and losing to Columbus in the Leagues Cup. By reaching the MLS Cup final, which LAFC won two years ago, Cherundolo will become the first person to take his team to the league title game three times in as many years since 2007.

Now both coaches are within reach of their second titles. If LAFC, which has the fifth-highest payroll in the league, can beat Seattle on Nov. 23, and the Galaxy, whose payroll ranks seventh, gets by Minnesota United the next day, the neighbors will meet in the Western Conference final.

The winner of that game will earn the right to play host to the league championship game — a game in which neither money nor Messi will influence.

That’s something worth cheering, for MLS, its fans and its corporate partners.

⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.