The numbers behind Lionel Messi’s historic MLS season: Everything that Messi won in 2025

Six years on from the team’s first competitive game, Inter Miami were crowned MLS champions in front of an ecstatic home crowd at Chase Stadium last weekend.

Co-founded by legendary former player David Beckham, Inter Miami have always glimmered with the sheen of celebrity but the past two and a half years have been defined by a particularly luminous presence. Lionel Messi arrived in the summer of 2023, just months after leading Argentina to a historic World Cup triumph, and has been a transformative addition to the league.

Messi has been a star throughout his time in MLS but in 2025 the Inter Miami captain may have put together the greatest campaign in U.S. soccer history. A season that began in freezing Kansas City on February 19 ended in glory in South Florida last week as Inter Miami lifted MLS Cup for the first time in team history.

“It was a long year, with many matches and a lot of travel, but also a historic year for the club, as it was the first time we won the MLS Cup,” Messi said this week, reflecting on a historic season. “It’s a great club, still quite young, and being able to achieve what we did was wonderful, very special.”

Lionel Messi’s historic 2025 season

Since his arrival MLS Cup was also the top priority for Messi and Inter Miami. The national championship is the best test of a team’s quality and it boasts the standalone championship game - MLS Cup - to crown the season.

Lionel Messi did not score in last Saturday’s 3-1 victory over the Vancouver Whitecaps but he had a hand in all three Miami goals. He lifted the Philip F. Anschutz Trophy and was named Man of the Match in the final.

Messi ends the 2025 season with 43 goals and 26 assists in 49 appearances for Inter Miami. He ended the regular season as the league’s Golden Boot winner, also finishing joint-first in the assist rankings. In the postseason Messi was historically good, providing six goals and nine assists to break the MLS record for most goal involvements in a single playoff tournament.

In the days following MLS Cup, Messi was announced as the MLS Most Valuable Player for 2025. He becomes only the second player in the league’s 30-year history to win the award twice, and the first to win it in back-to-back seasons. Messi became just the fourth player in MLS history to win the Golden Boot and be crowned MVP in the same season.

Earlier this year Messi signed a three-year contract extension with Miami, keeping him in MLS through the 2028 season. He will lead the team into a new era next year when the team begins life in the soccer-specific Miami Freedom Park stadium and will continue to be the star of the growing U.S. soccer league.

“I think he’s the unicorn of unicorns,” MLS commissioner Don Garber said of Messi recently. “You know, there’s something about the way he’s wired. He’s thinking about the game like nobody else ever has. His intensity and desire to win is what makes him the greatest of all time.”

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