The Inter Miami Dream

Oh, you thought good weather, an upcoming World Cup in the US and luck is enough to pull off one of the most impressive feats in football in recent years? Sure, it helps. But when Inter Miami was founded, the Club’s leadership set out to be the reference point of fútbol in North America. Only a few years into its existence, the ownership group of Jorge Mas, David Beckham, and Jose Mas has already set its sights on something greater: becoming a top fútbol club in the world. And how exactly do you do that? For those guys, the answer is simple: Sign the best players in the world. Or even THE best player. Of all time. Today, Inter Miami CF boasts some of the finest footballers globally and is driving Major League Soccer to new heights.

Xavier Asensi, former FC Barcelona handball player turned business executive, Co-President and Chief Business Officer of Inter Miami CF, has worked closely with the Club’s owners and other members of the leadership team to build a club that could make these dreams realities. The winner of the Doug Hamilton MLS Executive Of The Year Award in 2023, lover of spreadsheets and data, showed us how circumstance combined with years of planning and strategy allowed the Club to accomplish the impossible. We picked four quotes from Xavier to show you what Inter Miami is made of. The ideas. The approach. The execution.

In knowing who you are, you already know who you are not. Xavier is very aware of that. With tradition out of the equation, he had to dream and offer things others can’t. To everyone, but especially to Lionel Messi. You don’t get Messi overnight, but Inter Miami held back the jersey with the number 10 since 2022. That’s not luck, that’s conviction. You don’t get Messi by fighting pound for pound with football behemoths. You have to be creative, intelligent, ahead of the rest. Now Inter Miami is Messi’s club, but not only that. The most googled sports team in the world. Only $60 million away from being among the Top 20 highest grossing clubs globally per the Deloitte Football Money League.

LeBron. Brady. Curry. Biles. Tiger. Kobe. The most popular athletes in the USA in recent years. And now Messi: A guy that plays a sport they don’t even know the name of. Not an American. The first one ever. Xavier helped build a football club in a country of Basketball, the other Football and Baseball. Inter Miami dreamt of bringing the GOAT and got the GOAT. Everybody said that it was impossible. Imagine what they’ll do next.

Xavier’s approach to football is simple: The better the players, the more goals you score. The more goals you score, the better your chances of winning titles. The more trophies you win, the more you engage with people and the higher your revenue - which you turn into better players again. So how to best kick off this cycle? By getting a very good player as the starting point. Maybe even the best of all time?

But this is not just about business - Xavier’s words, not ours. Inter Miami’s motto, Freedom to Dream, is a nod to the roots of the Club’s owners. For Jorge and Jose Mas, the motto is a symbol of their family’s dream of a better life as exiles coming to America from Cuba, a story familiar to many in South Florida. For David Beckham, the motto carries enough weight that he has its Spanish translation, Libertad Para Soñar, tattooed on his chest.

From immigrant milkman to telecommunications billionaire imprinting one mission statement on the Messi-Coup: Let’s show him that we care, with a line-up of brands that care. Adidas. Apple. Fanatics. MLS. Inter Miami put together a roster of partners and a support system only fit for the GOAT.

After years of preparations Xavier’s moment of satisfaction finally came when Messi himself was preoccupied with different things than Miami. With winning the World Cup that is. All of the work manifested itself in Leo uttering one little sentence under his breath just after the final whistle in Doha: “Ya’sta!”. That’s it. After winning the most important trophy of all, after a stint in Paris, after separating from his great and first love FC Barcelona, Lionel Andres Messi was ready for a new chapter.

Coming from FC Barcelona, Xavier definitely knows how to maneuver a football club grown decades with success unfathomable to most clubs, and lows scaring even the most hardknock fans. But how do you give an identity to a club that was founded in 2020 without the power of tradition behind it? Then we have the whole football vs. soccer thing: Make your mark in a country that seems to even get the name of the sport wrong - sounds challenging. With tradition in the back mirror and a club waiting to come to life there is only one way: You free yourself of it all. Inter Miami describe themselves as Dreamers, not the Status Quo. Dare. Be pink, not grey! Be a club, not just a brand! Be ambitious and relentlessly so. Be “fútbol” in a league of “soccer” and establish and broaden the sport further inside the biggest economy in the world while fighting the “other” football, basketball and baseball. Stuff of dreams.