Leo Messi in Paris. Leo Messi in Miami. Most Barcelona fans follow the track of the best player they have seen and will ever see with a mixture of unbearable nostalgia and unlimited admiration. They feel it as theirs, but it no longer belongs to them. They see the goals and the plays, now dressed in pink, and they celebrate and regret them at the same time, a strange feeling, while they long for what could have been and what wasn’t, an impossible. There is one culer that withstands the distance of the crack better than the rest. Especially because he has it close. His name is Xavier Asensi and, currently, after working for ten years at the Barça club and leaving it scandalized by Barçagate (he refused to sign any invoice with the company I3 Ventures when he was commercial director), he is the most senior executive of Inter Miami, the general manager of business. So that it is understood, a general manager of plenipotentiary influence as Ferran Reverter must have been at Barça until he resigned from the position. Above that, Asensi only answers to three people, the owner Jorge Mas and his brother Jose, co-owner, and David Beckham, founder and also co-owner of the club.

Asensi, born 42 years ago in Barcelona, ??but a Sabadellian at heart, received a colossal task so he was recruited for Inter Miami in 2021: place the club at the top of Major League Soccer (MLS) and try sign Messi At that time, Inter, especially through Beckham, had already done a previous job of approaching the crack with the collegiality to which only the big stars have access. It had been a while since the Argentine responded with winks to the courtship ritual, he even bought a house there for the family, but all the other things were missing. Asensi got it. Circumstances favored him, as he himself admits, but he had been preparing for the plan for years: “It is often said that luck comes when opportunity coincides with preparation. And that’s what happened.” Asensi gives more details: “We signed contracts in 2021 with sponsors and added clauses in case we suddenly grew tenfold as a club. Obviously, we didn’t use Messi’s name, but now, with him here, thanks to the clauses, the contracts have multiplied.” The stage was set, but the “circumstances” that, in a chain, shaped the footballer’s will were missing. Four were indispensable: the tearful farewell from Barcelona absolutely against their wishes, the lack of attachment of the experience in Paris, the liberating triumph in the World Cup with Argentina and the fictitious approach of a captured Barça with tweezers economically that confused desire with reality.

Reviewing the brutal impact that Messi has had at Inter Miami with immediate effect sinks into the wound of what could have been and was not with the Barça mentioned at the beginning. Asensi explains for La Vanguardia the advantages of having the “best player in history”, and recalls and updates the formula of the virtuous circle. “If you have the best footballers, you get better results; if you get better results, your odds of winning grow, and if you win more matches and titles, your social mass increases and so does your overall income.”

There are countless examples that illustrate the transformation that the club has experienced since the arrival of Messi. We must start, of course, with the sports field. Inter de Miami used to lose and now they are used to winning. That simple. The victories and the dominance of the 10 in the parties follow, which governs them, assists, dribbles and scores. There are those who claim that all this happens because MLS is a minor league. May be. Maybe they forget he’s been doing this his entire career.

There are also non-sports signs that help understand exponential growth. Adidas, the brand that dresses all MLS clubs, has had to react and supply the market with an additional production of Inter jerseys this season because they have sold out worldwide. Next year’s production can be compared to that of a club like Atlético de Madrid. “We have gone from being a young team in a league with a mostly local following to having a key position in the Sports Business of the country with the largest commercial market in the world”, congratulates Asensi, who remembers that the USA will be the organizing country of the America’s Cup in 2024, the Club World Cup in 2025, and the World Cup in 2026.

More evidence. There are no tickets left to sell. Pending the construction of the new stadium in 2025, there are currently 21,000 spectators and 15,000 season tickets. The rest of the locations are all already sold at high prices, but very tasty for the “secondary market”, that is, within the reach of the highest bidder in a resale that is legal in the USA. There is so much demand that there is a waiting list to access the VIP boxes. Everyone wants to see Leo Messi play.

Graduate in International Trade with complementary studies at Stanford, entrepreneur with several years of professional experience in China, recruited for FC Barcelona by Sandro Rosell to explore the Asian market… When reviewing the resume, Asensi is likely to look back and nothing fills it more than the signing of Lionel Messi, the operation that shook the sports industry in the United States.