club
Inter Miami CF
Inter Miami CF launched in 2018 and entered MLS in 2020. Its South Florida story takes in Lionel Messi, the 2023 Leagues Cup and the 2025 MLS Cup.
Summary
Inter Miami's first seasons and first trophy tell the story of a South Florida MLS newcomer becoming a worldwide football attraction. There was a club here before the famous names arrived.
Quick facts
- Launched
- 29 January 2018
- MLS debut
- 1 March 2020
- Home region
- South Florida
- First trophy
- Leagues Cup, 2023
A South Florida club before the global spotlight
The launch of Inter Miami came on 29 January 2018, with 2020 set for the first MLS season. Between the announcement and the opening league match, there were teams to assemble and a club to put together. Its academy wore the colours in a match before the senior team made its competitive debut.
Los Angeles FC hosted that first MLS game on 1 March 2020. Back in South Florida, the former Lockhart Stadium site in Fort Lauderdale had become a stadium and training centre for the project. “Miami” expressed an ambition for the wider region; it was not a precise description of every place where the club played those early matches.
South Florida is central in the club’s own timeline. The international name, pink accents and heron imagery were already part of Miami’s identity when its most famous player arrived.
Messi changed the scale of the conversation
In July 2023, Lionel Messi signed. Sergio Busquets followed, adding another link to Barcelona. Suddenly, people who had not watched Miami’s first seasons knew the young MLS club and the players who were joining it.
The first trophy followed against Nashville in August 2023. Messi scored in the Leagues Cup final, which finished 1-1 before a long shootout. Goalkeeper Drake Callender helped win it. The football had supplied a result to go with all the new attention around the team.
December 2025 brought the first MLS Cup, a 3-1 final win over Vancouver Whitecaps. What had become a league-wide focus on one player’s arrival was now also a story about Miami winning a championship.
The club and the individual are different stories
Much of the interest in Miami follows Messi, but his career cannot cover the club’s whole history. There were already an academy, a training base and early seasons in South Florida. The first title belongs in that developing club history as well as in an account of the individual who helped win it.
The highest-paid footballers table follows the money, distinguishing annual earnings estimates from club wages. Here the subject is the club those players joined: its beginnings, its early South Florida identity and the changes which made 2023 such a turning point.
Sources
Sources checked
FAQ
When did Inter Miami begin playing in MLS?
Its first MLS match was away to Los Angeles FC on 1 March 2020. The club had been launched in January 2018.
What was Inter Miami’s first trophy?
Miami's first trophy was the 2023 Leagues Cup, won on penalties after the final against Nashville ended 1-1.