Lionel Messi has spent two decades threading passes into spaces only he could see. On this night at the Nu Stadium, one of those passes told a very different story.
With Inter Miami pushing in their 2-2 draw against the visitors from Texas, Messi drifted inside, head up, scanning as he has done a thousand times before. He spotted what his instincts swore was an opening down the left and clipped a perfectly weighted ball toward the touchline.
Nobody was there.
The ball skipped into a vast patch of empty grass and rolled meekly out of play. No overlapping run, no late surge, no pink shirt in sight. Messi stopped, half-turning as if to check his own radar. Around him, team-mates glanced at one another, puzzled. The pass had all the usual precision. The picture in his mind belonged to another era.
From the commentary box came the line that captured it instantly: “The ghost of Jordi Alba was over there.” It was a joke, but it landed because it felt true.
For nine years at Barcelona, that corridor on the left flank was Alba’s private highway. Messi would drop into the pocket, Alba would explode beyond the winger, and the ball would arrive in stride, almost without either of them needing to look. Titles, trophies, and countless goals were built on that simple, devastating pattern.
They brought that chemistry to Florida in 2023, reuniting at Inter Miami and briefly turning MLS into a reminder reel of old Camp Nou routines. Then, at the end of last year, Alba walked away from the professional game. The understanding stayed.
On this night, it betrayed Messi.
The moment spread quickly across social media, clipped and replayed, not as evidence of decline but as a glimpse into the depth of his habits. One fan on X wrote, “Messi misses Alba for real.” Another suggested he had “forgot Alba retired for a moment.” Others laughed that he was “out here passing to ghosts,” while the phrase “muscle memory is real” echoed through the replies.
It felt less like an error and more like a reflex from a career lived in tandem with one full-back’s movement. Messi saw the run because, for nearly a decade, the run was always there.
The match itself left Inter Miami with mixed feelings. The 2-2 draw keeps them competitive, but not quite in control. They sit fourth in the table on 11 points from six games, just two points off leaders Nashville SC. Close enough to see the summit, not close enough to feel comfortable.
Messi will not dwell on one stray pass. He has mis-hit balls before, and he will mis-hit more. What lingered from this one was the reminder that even the greatest are shaped by the players who ran beside them, the patterns they rehearsed, the partnerships that defined their prime.
Next up is the New York Red Bulls on Sunday. New opponents, same left flank, and a question that now hangs over every Messi pass into that channel: who will write the next chapter in the space Jordi Alba used to own?
