Can Inter Miami become the 'true team' Lionel Messi needs it to be?

Inter Miami fell 3-0 to its Florida rival Orlando City on Sunday. It was Miami's third straight MLS game without a win and third loss of the 2025 season. 

Orlando marked Lionel Messi out of the game beautifully and created dozens of chances throughout the game Its win was comprehensive and straightforward — and that spells trouble for Miami moving forward.

After a charmed 18 months with Messi and his ex-Barcelona teammates, alarm bells are starting to ring for Miami. Players look exhausted and lineups keep changing. Miami's famous attack is blunted while its notoriously leaky defense continues to struggle. The team has conceded an eye-watering ten goals in its last three MLS appearances and scored just four in reply. Talisman Messi was only involved in one of them.

In a rare post-match interview with Apple TV, Messi laid out the situation with surprising candor. "We're a team in difficult times," he told Apple TV's Michele Giannone in Spanish. "When everyone wins, it's easy, but now that difficult times are coming, that's when we have to be more united than ever, be a true team, and move forward, because we have what it takes.

"Think about what's next and prepare for the next game."

Messi's plea for "a true team" hit hard for MLS fans, many of whom bristle against Miami precisely because it doesn't feel like one. Miami is Messi, for better or worse; his influence controls everything from player recruitment to coach selection to the fates of Miami's backroom staff. His teammates are his ex-Barcelona buddies. His coach is an inexperienced colleague from Barcelona and the Argentina national team. His Director of Football is someone he calls his "footballing dad". 

In a bid to keep Messi happy, Miami appears to have sacrificed much of its identity in the Argentine's favor — and for everyone else on the roster, that sacrifice makes being "a true team" a challenging ask indeed. None of this is Messi's fault, exactly, but it is fast becoming his problem.

“Clearly, [during this slump] something has happened where the team has lost a lot of confidence,” said Miami coach Javier Mascherano after the Orlando loss. “We have had a drop in level individually and collectively and it’s clear one way or another we have tried with different schemes, different names, and still today we are hurting."

Mascherano isn't exaggerating when he speaks of "different names." He's fielded wildly different lineups throughout this MLS season in the hopes of finding his best one. In 13 games Mascherano has run through three different goalkeepers, seven different striking lineups, 10 different defenses and a whopping 13 different midfields. He's never, not once, kept his lineup the same between matches.

That lack of consistency is part of Miami's struggle. The team concedes more big chances than any other outfit in MLS and always looks easy to carve through. Just look at the way Orlando striker Luis Muriel slid through Miami's defense in their Florida Derby: