FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Lionel Messi only did Saturday what was expected, demanded of him with nothing less accepted, from the moment he arrived in Miami a mortal god.

He lifted Inter Miami to where he resides: On the top of the world.

He made champions of a franchise in only its sixth season, lifting the MLS Cup with a 3-1 home triumph over the Vancouver Whitecaps at Chase Stadium in Fort Lauderdale in the title game of the top-tier soccer league in America.

Messi on the first goal fed Tadeo Allende for the shot that led to an own-goal against Vancouver’s Edier Ocampo. On Miami’s winning goal in the 71st minute it was Messi’s pick-pocket steal — magic as if on cue — that fed Rodrigo De Paul for the championship second goal from the center of the box. Then Messi added another assist, feeding Allende’s money shot in the 96th minute as the celebrating uncorked.

Vancouver dominated in ball possession. Alas, only goals count.

The match was an odd mid-afternoon start to appeal to soccer-made fans abroad, an unusual day game for Inter Miami. The fireworks were in broad daylight, in the end the sold-out crowd and the home-team champs lending new meaning to the phrase “pretty in pink.”

You may have noticed. Winning your league’s championship is hard, the rarest delight in sports. Just ask Miami Dolphins fans, who have been waiting since 1973 to experience the feeling again. How many Dolfans have died waiting? (Rhetorical question. Too frightening to actually fathom an answer.)

In South Florida history in the traditional Big Four sports, the Dolphins, Heat, Marlins and Florida Panthers have together won nine championships in their 163 combined seasons, an average of one every 18 years.

Inter Miami was after its first crown as a child-age franchise born as the COVID pandemic hit hard in 2020, a team nondescript, under-radar and mostly losing, until those three words changed everything — three magical words that still don’t seem real, even now.

Messi to Miami.

The world’s greatest player in the one true global sport ... ours. Messi arrived in the summer of 2023 and MLS immediately became the Messi League Soccer, one man elevating an entire league, an entire sport in the United States.

LeBron James joining the Miami Heat for four years in the 2010s was transformative, the biggest thing in American sports then.

Messi coming to Miami and MLS was bigger worldwide.

His arrival was the needed last-minute tailwind that helped lead to the new Miami Freedom Park finally celebrating its inaugural season next year.

Messi’s presence is a driving force behind enthusiasm for the ‘26 men’s World Cup being tri-hosted by the U.S., Canada and Mexico next summer. Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium will host seven matches and one, in the round of 32, could see Messi — still sublime at age 38 — playing here for his Argentine national team.

Credit the vision of the late Dolphins owner Joe Robbie for Hard Rock (the mostly-football stadium he built) having a playing surface pitch-perfect for international soccer, too.

The world has been searching for the “Next Messi” for 20 years. An 18-year-old Spanish footballer named Lamine Yamal is supposedly the next, maybe the 15th or 20th so nominated, all thus far destined to fall short.

Ray Hudson, a fixture in South Florida soccer for 50 years, on the budding wonder of the teen sensation: “How do you describe moonlight? How do you describe candlelight? How do you count the bubbles in a glass of champagne?”

That poetry directed toward Yamal’s potential describes Messi first, of course — the one all other greats are compared to, and (so far) fail to become.

Messi’s league-MVP season and Saturday’s fitting finish crowned what has been a South Florida relationship with professional soccer dating back more than 50 years, an on-off-on love affair.

It began in the original NASL, which lasted from 1967 to ‘85, when the little-remembered Washington Darts relocated and became the Miami Gatos in 1972 (the year of the Dolphins’ Perfect Season), then played as the Miami Toros in 1973-76.

The Brazilian legend Pele’, growing soccer in America a half-century before Messi would, played an exhibition at the Orange Bowl in ‘73, his club team Santos FC humbling the Toros, 6-1. It was a precursor. Pele’ electrified the NASL by signing with the New York Cosmos and playing there in in 1975-77.

It was then that the Toros moved north and became the Fort Lauderdale Striker in ‘77, playing at the old Lockhart Stadium on the very sight where Chase Stadium now sits on the old Lockhart boneyard. Who bought the Strikers to keep soccer alive in Greater Miami? Joe Robbie.

His Strikers, like the Messi-era Inter Miami today, attracted aging superstars like Gerd Muller and Teofilo (Nene) Cubillas, along with a rising young blond Brit named Ray Hudson.

Not until Saturday, though, not in 50-plus years, had South Florida fans cheered a major soccer champion.

The Toros made the NASL title game in 1974, but lost.

The Strikers reached the 1980 Soccer Bowl, but lost 3-0 to the Cosmos.

Our first MLS iteration, the Miami Fusion, played from 1998 to 2001 and won the ‘01 Supporters’ Shield for best season record (led by coach Ray Hudson), but lost in the playoff semifinals.

Messi-led Inter Miami won the Supporters’ Shield in 2024, but then stunningly lost in the first round of the playoffs.

Not Saturday. Not this time.

Messi has won a World Cup. Hopes to win another next summer. There is no pretending his raising the MLS Cup is any crown jewel in the decorated career of maybe the world’s most revered athlete.

Saturday, though, made full circle the checkered 50-plus years or pro soccer in South Florida, and giving it championship punctuation at last.

All it took was Lionel Messi to make it happen. As expected.

©2025 Miami Herald. Visit miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.