SoFla Guide Editors
Remember when Inter Miami could not win a playoff series to save their lives? That ended last November, when the Herons finally got past the first round and then lifted MLS Cup, according to ESPN and Sports Illustrated. Now, with four trophies on the shelf in the Messi era, the conversation around the club has shifted to a tournament no MLS team has ever played: the Copa Libertadores.
The curse, and how it broke
The low point came in 2024. Inter Miami set the MLS record for most points in a single regular season and won their first Supporters’ Shield, ESPN reported, then lost in the first round of the playoffs to Atlanta United in a best-of-three series. Atlanta had finished ninth in the Eastern Conference, 34 points behind Miami, and only clinched a wild-card spot with a win on the final day of the regular season, per ESPN.
ESPN pinned that collapse on injuries, roster depth problems and defensive irregularity, plus a preseason in which players logged more than 28,000 miles in the air.
Then-coach Gerardo “Tata” Martino did not sugarcoat it. “In this last part of the year we get used to achieving the objectives that we set for ourselves and we have not been able to achieve the most important one,” he told ESPN.
Fast forward to 2025. Inter Miami advanced past the first round for the first time in club history, beating Nashville SC 4-0 in Game 3 on November 8, ESPN reported. Javier Mascherano, the coach that season, kept it simple afterward: “I think the team played almost perfectly,” he told ESPN.
The run ended with the club’s first MLS Cup, a 3-1 win over Vancouver Whitecaps FC in which Messi provided two assists, according to Sports Illustrated and ESPN. Defender Noah Allen had set the bar in October of that year. Asked by ESPN whether failing to win MLS Cup would be a failure, he answered, “Yeah. We have high expectations for ourselves.”
Messi, for his part, won the Landon Donovan MVP award in both 2024 and 2025, the first back-to-back winner in league history, per SI.
What is still bugging this team
Here is the catch. The old problems have not fully gone away.
ESPN reports that Inter Miami’s 2026 season has been marked by ongoing depth and defensive problems, and Mascherano has departed and been replaced as head coach. In ESPN’s words, the club’s “lack of depth continues to make Miami vulnerable.” That is the same language that followed the 2024 flop, which is not a great sign heading into another postseason.
ESPN even ran a video segment on September 30, 2026, titled “Does Inter Miami have problems moving into the post-season?” The full analysis lives behind a paywall, so we will not pretend to know its conclusions. The title alone tells you where the worry is.
The standings are not bad, to be fair. Inter Miami sit second in the Eastern Conference with 49 points after 28 games, behind Nashville SC, according to ESPN’s season data. There is also a fresh trophy in the cabinet: the 2026 Campeones Cup, won 2-0 over Cruz Azul on a night when Messi scored his 100th goal for the club, SI reported.
The Libertadores dream
That Campeones Cup brought Messi’s haul with Inter Miami to four: Leagues Cup (2023), Supporters’ Shield (2024), MLS Cup (2025) and Campeones Cup (2026), according to Sports Illustrated, which puts his career total at 48 trophies for club and country. SI notes the one competition Inter Miami have entered and never won is the Concacaf Champions Cup, where they reached the semifinals in 2025.
Then there is the one they have never entered at all. No MLS club has ever played in the Copa Libertadores, per SI, and co-owner Jorge Mas wants to change that. “I want to play the Libertadores,” Mas said, per Sports Illustrated and Yahoo Sports. “I believe the MLS champion deserves a place in the competition.” SI reports he has already had conversations with CONMEBOL about it.
The club’s sporting director, identified as González in SI’s reporting, said the idea has Messi’s attention too. “Obviously, we’d love it because it would be amazing; plus … it’s one of the few trophies Leo is missing, so I think that really got him excited too,” he told Sports Illustrated.
CONMEBOL president Alejandro Dominguez told SI “the door is open” to MLS and Liga MX teams, with one big caveat: an agreement must first be reached with CONCACAF. Sports Illustrated, Athlon Sports and Outlook India have all reported Inter Miami could reportedly compete in the Libertadores in a future season, 2027 or later, but that remains an aspiration, not a confirmed entry.
What’s next
The near-term question is the one ESPN keeps asking: can a thin, defensively shaky roster hold up through another playoff run? The 2025 title proved this group can get it done. The 2024 exit proved how quickly a dominant season can unravel.
Messi is under contract through 2028, per ESPN, so the window for a South American adventure is open for a while yet. Whether the suits at CONMEBOL and CONCACAF can hammer out a deal is out of Miami’s hands. The playoffs are not.
