The Messi effect: Luis Suárez is Inter Miami’s latest landmark signing

Inter Miami have added another superstar to the fold. The announcement of Inter Miami’s latest signing means Lionel Messi will link up with yet another former Barcelona teammate at DRV PNK Stadium next season. Joining fellow former Camp Nou heroes Messi, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba, Luis Suárez has agreed a one-year deal with the MLS side, with the option of a further year.

But by the time Messi and Suárez take to the field for Inter Miami, it will have been almost four years since they last played together. Suárez, who turns 37 in January, has played for three clubs in that time, in three countries. As he has battled the inevitable effects of ageing, how different a player is the version of Suárez set for a Miami reunion with Messi?

Suárez left Barcelona in the summer of 2020, a year before Messi’s departure for Paris Saint-Germain. He joined Diego Simeone’s Atlético Madrid, a club whose on-field philosophy of win-at-all-costs doggedness and defensive organization stands in stark contrast to the cultured passing play espoused at the Camp Nou. Yet the Uruguayan thrived.

“There were certainly high expectations when Suárez arrived at Atlético and we can’t forget that he’d scored 16 league goals for Barcelona the previous season, despite not playing as much,” says the Madrid-based football journalist Euan McTear. “So most fans were confident that he could contribute. The question mark was how much longer he’d be able to play at the top level and if he’d be able to avoid injury. Fortunately for Atlético, their gamble paid off.”

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Having appeared to have lost a degree of sharpness in his final months with Barcelona, the former Liverpool striker was rejuvenated by the move and, if his performances were any indicator, determined to demonstrate that his decline had been vastly overstated. Scoring 21 goals in 32 games, Suarez was pivotal in delivering Atlético’s first La Liga title in seven years.

“He was a consistent contributor throughout,” McTear says, “even though Atlético as a whole dropped off in the second half of the campaign as the pressure grew. But Suárez rarely feels pressure and kept his cool in the final weeks. He was one of the few players in the squad who had won the league before and that experience was crucial, especially as he scored the winning goals against Osasuna and Real Valladolid in the final two weeks.

“If Barcelona moved on from Suárez because they feared he would decline, they were sort of right. They just got the timing wrong. The decline did eventually come, as it does for everyone, but it wasn’t really until the second half of 2021-22 that Suárez lost his place as a starter.”

When his two-year contract with Atlético expired in the summer of 2022, Suárez went home, joining his boyhood team, Nacional of Montevideo, Uruguay. Seventeen years after he made his professional debut for the club as an 18-year-old, the 138-cap Uruguayan superstar led Nacional to the Primeira Division title, scoring eight goals in sixteen appearances in a brief, six-month spell. Then, in December 2022, it was on to Brazil and Grêmio.

“It was huge news for a Brazilian club to get a player of the status of Suárez,” says Robbie Blakeley, a football journalist based in Rio. “There were some concerns about his physical condition. The problems with his knee are well documented. But he’s a world-class talent, one of the best center-forwards of the 21st century, so there was more excitement than concern when he arrived.

“He scored a goal five minutes into his debut and he had a hat-trick before half-time. That really hyped up the Grêmio fans and people all over Brazil.”

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Suárez battled knee problems for much of his late Barcelona career. But in Brazil, given the heavy schedule of regional competitions, national cups and the national championship, his knee issues became more troublesome. He began to receive pain-killing injections before and after games and practised sparingly. He’d signed a two-year contract with Grêmio, but by July, there were reports he might cancel his deal in light of his injury struggles.

“I think he felt like he couldn’t do it any more,” Blakeley says. “The Brazilian calendar is very intense and the pitches aren’t always the best. He had a chat with the board. I think there was already talk that Suárez was going to move to Miami. But they agreed a deal that if he stayed until the end of the year, he could cancel the second year of his contract.

“Even since then, he gave everything for the club – every drop of sweat, every drop of blood. He ran himself into the ground. That’s why the fans loved him so much and he’s become such a hero, such an idol, in such a short space of time.”

Suárez finished the campaign with 26 goals and 17 assists from 53 appearances in all competitions, enough to inspire recently promoted Grêmio to second place in the league table and earn him the Golden Ball as the player of the season. Age and injuries meant Suárez was not the player of his Liverpool and Barcelona heyday – all swift turns, driving runs and penalty-box inventiveness – but he remained hugely effective as a scorer, creator and leader.

“His knees were hindering him a lot in terms of his pace and his ability to beat defenders,” Blakeley says, “but his movement was still there, his positioning, his in-game intelligence to find space, to link up with the midfield and attack. And his finishing doesn’t seem to have diminished at all. Obviously the Brazilian league is way, way down from the Premier League and La Liga, but he was able to adapt very easily.

“There was certainly some movement [remaining in his game], but I didn’t see him drop back as much as I’d see him do with Liverpool and Barcelona or even with Atlético Madrid. He was more of a static center-forward target man. He would wait upfront. But his intelligence really shone through at this level, his ability to find space, to lose a marker and to open up an opportunity for himself. That was his game style in Brazil.”

A little less mobile these days and with injuries a recurrent issue, yet still in possession of a sharp mind for the game and capable of match-winning brilliance – it seems Inter Miami’s superstar South Americans still have plenty in common.