FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The craziest part still to fathom, even after a season of it, as Inter Miami returns to view?

It’s the gap between them and him.

Between their world and his world.

Between where they can go and where he can take them.

“It was a trip I couldn’t have gone on except on this team,’’ Inter Miami forward Robert Taylor was saying Wednesday about the recently completed four-continent, five-exhibition junket where they proselytized in pink.

Or he proselytized to the soccer world, really. Messi.

Taylor grew up in Finland and, at 29, was trending to a good, if unremarkable, career until he landed at Inter Miami last season just before Messi signed. Now he plays alongside him. So much changed for him and his teammates.

Now they’re on the doorstep of the next Major League Soccer season with a simple friendly Thursday night in Fort Lauderdale against a small opponent. Except there’s nothing simple or small when Messi is involved, as he obviously is in this exhibition against his boyhood team from Rosario, Argentina.

He’s the reason this game happened. He’s why the Argentine media descended for this final tuneup to Inter Miami’s season opener next week. Just the comment that he’ll play Thursday night became an international headline.

Several dozen fans waited to get a drive-by glimpse of him leaving the team’s Fort Lauderdale facility, pleading with outstretched paraphernalia to sign, “Leo! Leo!”

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