The Major League Soccer regular season wraps up on the other side of this current international break. Every team but one will be in action on “decision day,” as the final playoff spots are booked and seedings secured. DC United are still alive for playoff berth (it’s been a few years), so I’m fairly excited.

With the regular season winding up, that means there’s talk about end-of-season awards, including who should be named Most Valuable Player. An early favorite for that award at the start of the season would have been Lionel Messi, who was expected the lead Inter Miami CF to the Supporters’ Shield (awarded to the team with the best regular season record), top playoff seed and, eventually, MLS Cup. But a funny thing happened on the way to that Supporters’ Shield, which the club wrapped up a couple of weeks ago – Miami proved that maybe they didn’t really need Messi that much after all.

Before we go any further, I’m not here to rip on Messi’s talent or career. He’s an amazing player, easily in the running for GOAT status when it comes to soccer, and I’ve enjoyed watching him play even though he’s never played for any of my teams. I’m just talking about whether, in this particular season, Messi deserves the title of MLS MVP.

Let’s get the numbers (all sourced from FotMob) out of the way – going into the final weekend of play Messi has scored 17 goals and dished out 10 assists in only 18 games. That’s an insane rate of production, down to a combination of Messi’s freakish talent and MLS not exactly being the most competitive league in the world. For context, DC United’s Christian Benteke, who leads the league in goals scored, has 23 in 29 games (with 5 assists to boot), while assist leader Luciano Acosta (of FC Cincinnati – and formerly DC United!) has 16 assists and 14 goals in 31 games. If it was just a matter of per-game production, Messi is the easy choice.

But that’s not the award. There are purely stat-based awards for scorers and assisters and such. One could argue that those should be based on something other than raw numbers (goals per 90 minutes played, or something), but that’s a debate for another day. Other leagues award the best player. The crux of the biscuit when it comes to MVP awards, however, is the word in the middle – “valuable.” What does it mean to be the most “valuable” player on a particular team, much less in the league?

By one measure Messi would clearly be the most valuable player in MLS, given the eyeballs and money he’s brought to the league. Messi isn’t the league’s first big signing  (his owner/operator at Miami, David Beckham, literally changed the way MLS operated when he came to the Galaxy in 2007), but there’s no denying he’s had a huge impact on the league’s profile globally. Haters may call it a “retirement league,” but if the retirees are the best who ever played the game does anybody really care?

Of course, that’s not what “valuable” really means in this context. It has to do with on the field performance, what a player means to the success of his team. That said, it’s not purely about who has the most talent or who had the gaudiest stats. Therein lies the problem with Messi being MVP, at least this year.

The 2024 MLS season was semi-interrupted by Copa America, with the nominally South American championship being held in the United States. Messi, of course, played for Argentina in that tournament. His last MLS match prior to the tournament was a 3-3 draw with St. Louis City on June 1. At the time, 18 games into the season, Miami was in first place in the Eastern Conference and overall with 35 points, 2 points clear of Cincy.

While Copa America was going on, Miami played 5 MLS games (the league doesn’t actually stop for these big tournaments, which makes it look pretty amateur, honestly), of which it won 4. The only blemish was a 6-1 drubbing by Cincinnati. In spite of that, Miami slipped behind Cincy by a point at the top of the table. Maybe Messi’s absence was a big deal?

Here’s the thing – Messi was injured during Copa America and didn’t play again for Miami until September 14. In the interim, Miami played 4 more league games (we’ll leave to one side the Leagues Cup), all of which they won, including a 2-0 win over their Cincy nemesis. As a result, when Messi came back, Miami was right where they were when he left for Copa America – at the top of the table and 8 points clear of Cincy.

In other words, while Messi was away for either international duty or due to injury, Miami played 9 league games, won all but one of them, and were in the same place in the table as when Messi left, but even more secure in that perch. Given that, how can it be said that Messi was the “most valuable” member of that team? Sure, the other big name players that have flocked to Miami over the past few years – Jori Alba, Luis Suarez – are largely there because of Messi, but evidence suggests if Messi had simply vanished from the face of the Earth during preseason Miami would have been just fine.

Who is the most “valuable” player from MLS this season? I can’t say, as I haven’t seen many games outside of DC United’s and I’m biased towards Benteke because of that. But I am fairly certain it’s not Messi, at least not this year. Best player in the league? Almost certainly. The most valuable on a team that barely noted his absence? Certainly not.