The end was brutal and painful. Saturday night in South Florida, the locker room was dark. And somewhere in the middle of the fog biggest upset in Major League Soccer historya surprising reality sets in: Lionel Messi will enter the final guaranteed year of his MLS contract without a single playoff victory.

He was supposed to transform the league and Inter Miami. In a way, he certainly has. But his the body failed him in 2023. Atlanta United stunned him in 2024. He entered his second MLS offseason with more uncertainty than hope, and with a penetrating question looming:

Where do Messi and Inter Miami go from here?

The answer, in one sense, did not change Saturday night. They will still be the faces of the league in 2025. They will be, thanks to FIFA, headliner of the Club World Cupa platform on which their global ambitions could flourish.

But the rest of the answer it depends on where the MLS lets them go – and, ultimately, about what Messi wants to do with the rest of his life.

Can Messi’s dream team get the boost they need?

When Messi signed with Inter and MLS Last June, he did so on a two-and-a-half-year contract, apparently with the option to add a year and stay until 2026.

THE the official “roster profiles” of the league do not mention this option year. But whatever happens, barring a total unforeseen event, Messi will be back next season. Sergio Busquets too. Jordi Alba and Luis Suarez likely will too – Alba has a 2025 option in his contract, and Suarez revealed last month that he wanted to extend his. The core of the super team must remain intact.

Beyond the Fantastic Four, goalkeeper Drake Callender, defender Tomás Avilés, midfielder Federico Redondo, midfielder Julian Gressel, winger Facundo Farías (who missed the entire 2024 season after tearing his LCA), striker Leonardo Campana, midfielder Benjamin Cremaschi and other youngsters are all under contract until 2025.

The club could also choose to bring back midfielder Matías Rojas, defender Marcelo Weigandt and midfielder Yannick Bright, all starters in 2024.

Aside from star midfielder Diego Gomez, a striking star who is on the way to Brighton in England, Miami could essentially go backwards. And despite Saturday’s shocking loss, it wouldn’t be a far-fetched idea. The Herons were the class of MLS in 2024. They won more regular season points than any other team in league history. They collapsed this month less because they had fatal flaws, but more because football is random.

Of course, they had flaws. Their midfield was porous against the ball. Their defense was fragile. They will surely target a solid central defender for their partner Avilés in 2025. They cannot continue to concede more than 1.5 expected goals (xG) per game, as they did last season, and expect to qualify for the MLS Cup.

But they also can’t, by rule, add too many meaningful pieces. under current MLS spending restrictions.

Lots of useful players I would love to come and play with Messi. Most cannot, unless they take significant pay cuts, because MLS Listing Rules are among the most prohibitive and obscure in world football. Neymar, for example, has often been linked with a move to Miami. But “today it’s impossible,” Miami head coach Tata Martino said recently. The only way to do that, Martino explained, would be for the league to “make the salary issue more flexible.”

Technically, Miami might have a little more flexibility than Martino suggested. But the broader point is that, with salaries and foreign players subject to certain caps, it is very difficult for any star-powered MLS club to also build a deep and complete team.

The hope – in Miami and elsewhere, but certainly not everywhere – is that the rules could change. Messi’s arrival allowed Inter owner Jorge Mas and others at the top of the league to push for an easing of restrictions. When asked last winter why the easing had not yet happened, Todd Durbin, MLS’s senior vice president of player strategy, said league executives had avoided the adjustments progressive for 2024 because they didn’t want to “pin us down or pigeonhole us”, in case they “wanted to make more radical changes or do a bigger overhaul of the system.

Will this overhaul finally take place this offseason? The committee which actually decides, the MLS sports and competition committeeis scheduled to meet on November 20 in Los Angeles. A person close to the decision-making process told Yahoo Sports that the “salary cap and player investment model” was an important item on the committee’s agenda. Any proposed changes could then be approved by the MLS Board of Governors (the owners) at its final meeting of the year on December 12.

A real overhaul could significantly change the calculus for Messi’s final year(s) in Miami. And it could allow them to be more competitive on the biggest stage MLS has ever seen.

The countdown begins for Miami on the global club scene

THE the first edition of the expanded Club World Cup comes to the United States next summer – provided FIFA finds a way to finance it. Part of the plan to attract broadcasters and sponsors apparently involved giving Inter Miami the only free berth to the tournament, even though the Herons did not qualify according to predefined criteria.

So, in June, for the first time, they will likely face a UEFA Champions League team in a competitive match.

They could meet Boca Juniors or River Plate; or Palmeiras, Flamengo or Fluminense.

They’ll surely play in front of a global TV audience many times the size they get for MLS games on Apple. They will have the opportunity to grow their international brand and make Miami a destination for players and fans long after Messi is gone.

This will be the highlight of their 2025 campaign. Then they will settle in for another MLS session, another Leagues Cup and another playoff series.

It remains to be seen whether this will be Messi’s last. He has consistently said, as recently as last month, that he doesn’t know if he will still be playing professional football in 2026. “I hope to start (2025) with a very good pre-season – which I don’t. I didn’t have last year. with all the trips we’ve taken – and from there see how I go,” Messi said in an interview on the eve of the playoffs.

For now, he lives “day by day”, in the present moment, having fun. He continues to serve and play for the Argentina national team. They are on course to qualify for the 2026 World Cup.

This historic tournament, which will be played across North America, could force Messi to extend his contract with Inter Miami beyond 2025. If he does not want to play another full season in MLS, he could benefit of a controversial issue: the leaders and owners of the League are plans to return their calendarstarting the seasons in August and ending in the spring, starting in 2026. If they make the change – a possibility but not yet a probability – they will play a one-off, one-off competition in the spring of 2026 to close the gap, they said. three people close to the discussions told Yahoo Sports. Messi could sign up for this as his swan song from Inter Miami.

But even then, his MLS window would be half-closed.

Suddenly, after Saturday, the clocks in Miami – and at league headquarters – chime audibly.