Lionel Messi and his pink clad Inter Miami teammates kicked off the 2024 MLS season Wednesday night and showed why they are the league’s main attraction, dazzling the Chase Stadium crowd with precision passing, juking defenders left and right, looking at times like a team in mid-season form as they beat Real Salt Lake 2-0.

All the fans’ concern about Inter Miami players starting the season exhausted after a 24,000-mile five-nation preseason tour were put to rest. Messi looked fully fit and highly motivated as he ran hard for 90 minutes and eluded defenders time and time again, threading passes through tiny spaces, changing direction and speed at will.

He provided the nifty pass that led to Robert Taylor’s goal in the 39th minute and was also involved in Diego Gomez’s goal in the 83rd minute. Messi and his close friend and former FC Barcelona teammate Luis Suarez, making his MLS debut, combined to get the ball to Gomez at close range for his goal.

“Last year we talked about how Messi opened up so much space, but you have Messi and Suarez now…it opens a lot of space for me on the wing,” said Taylor. “They link so well together, so they attract a lot of defenders to them, so it leaves space for me also sometimes.”

In one of the more eye-popping moments of the night that instantly went viral on social media, Messi flicked the ball over injured Andrew Brody, who was on the ground, then hurdled over him and kept dribbling to try to get a shot off. The near-sellout crowd of 21,137, which included actor Will Smith and retired NFL star Chad Ochocinco, savored every Messi moment.

“He can take the ball far away from the goal and the feeling everyone gets is that there is promise of a goal,” coach Tata Martino said of Messi.

In the closing minutes, the diehard “La Familia” fans in the north stands waved their giant flags, banged their drums and serenaded Messi and his teammates with the trademark Argentine chant: “Ole, Ole, Ola, Cada Dia Te Queiro Mas” (Ole, Ole, Ola, Every Day I Love You More).

There was a sense from the opening whistle that Inter Miami was eager to return to the team it was last summer, when Messi looked other-worldly and Miami looked unbeatable as they rolled to the Leagues Cup title before he proved mortal with an injury that led to the team’s late-season slide.

Wednesday night, Messi was back to creating magic alongside his three former FC Barcelona teammates Sergio Busquets, Jordi Alba, and Luis Suarez, the Uruguayan forward making his MLS debut. At times it looked like they had telepathy, moving into spaces just in time to receive passes.

“I had been saying since we got back from Japan two weeks ago that we needed to have more training sessions together for them to rediscover their rhythm,” Martino said of Messi and Suarez. “In their case, they know each other well, but it takes time for them to find that connection again that they had in Barcelona.”

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