Lionel Messi has missed half the MLS season. Should he be MVP?

In a development that will only come as a shock to newborns and extraterrestrials, Lionel Messi’s MLS performances have been absolutely stellar this season. He has been a key part of the Inter Miami team at the top of the standings, has produced all manner of goals and assists, and has generally lived up to the hype every time he has stepped on the field.

It’s slightly more surprising that if his spectacular run ends with winning MLS’s Most Valuable Player award (MVP), it would be unprecedented in North American men’s sports and nearly unheard of in the most famous domestic men’s leagues in Europe – with one very notable exception.

At time of writing, Messi ranks fifth in the MLS goalscoring leaderboard with 17 and sixth in assists with 11, giving him 28 total goal contributions, good for third in the league. Those numbers are solid but hardly the stuff of a no-doubt MVP. And they aren’t notable by Messi’s astronomic standards.

That is, until you consider that he has achieved those numbers in just 18 appearances. That low total is due to a long layoff after an ankle injury suffered during the Copa América, which kept him sidelined for months. Messi’s total number of appearances will finalize at 19 assuming he plays in the regular-season finale on Saturday. He may add some goals and assists in that last game before the playoffs, but it’s unlikely he’ll finish the season leading the league in those categories.

On a per-90 minute basis, though, Messi is leading the league in goals, assists, and the combination of the two. He is also overperforming the expected versions of those statistics according to FBref – in other words, he is finishing difficult chances at a high rate, and consistently delivering assists to his teammates in unlikely situations.

These rough “per game” numbers stand out even in the context of Messi’s glittering career: The only two domestic league seasons in which he boasted more goal contributions per 90 minutes than 2024 are two from his peak at Barcelona – 2011-12, in which he notched 66 goal contributions in 37 games for an average of 1.94 per 90, and the following season, where he contributed 57 goals plus assists for an average of 1.82. With Inter Miami this season, Messi is hitting 1.73 goal contributions a game.

Lionel Messi, left, and Luis Suárez have been a dangerous combination this season. Photograph: Jason Mowry/Getty Images

Just as Barcelona and PSG, Inter Miami are reaping the benefits, clinching the Supporters’ Shield for the best regular-season record in the league a few weeks ago. With a win in Saturday’s finale, Miami would set a new MLS record for points in a single season.

There are plenty of other solid candidates for the 2024 MLS MVP though. Cucho Hernández has been the attacking talisman for the Columbus Crew, as has Luciano Acosta for an FC Cincinnati side that looks much different than it did a year ago. Christian Benteke will almost certainly win the Golden Boot, which automatically puts him in the MVP conversation. LAFC’s Denis Bouanga has been as devastating on the dribble as he is in front of goal, and Messi’s teammate Luis Suárez has also been instrumental in Miami’s success with his team-leading (for now) goal tally.

Can a player really be the most “valuable” in the whole league if his team performs almost exactly as well without him as they do with him, as is the case with Miami and Messi? Wouldn’t Benteke’s 23 goals be considered more valuable, considering they make up an astonishing 44% of DC United’s total? (That’s the highest such percentage in the league; Bouanga is second, with 32% of LAFC’s goals.) Where would FC Cincy be without Acosta pulling the strings at No 10, or the Crew without Cucho’s clutch goals?

In North America, MVP awards have not historically been won on “per-game” stats – rather, they recognize a body of work over as much of a full season as possible. If Messi finishes with 19 appearances in 2024, he will have appeared in just 55% of Inter Miami’s games. Were he to win MVP, it would be by far the lowest percentage of games appeared in by an MVP in the history of North American men’s major leagues.

There is plenty of historical precedent for a player to miss out on an MVP award by virtue of not playing enough. Joel Embiid lost out on one, and perhaps two, NBA MVPs in recent seasons, with at least part of the reasoning being that other players (most notably Nikola Jokić) were on the court more often. He may struggle to ever win another one, with NBA rules now stipulating that MVP candidates must have played in at least 65 games, or about 79% of the season.

In 2017, Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz looked to be a surefire MVP before a torn ACL ended his season after 13 games. He finished the regular season with more passing touchdowns than Tom Brady, who won the award instead. (And like Messi, Wentz’s absence didn’t end up ruining the Eagles’ season; they went on to win the Super Bowl over Brady and the Patriots with backup QB Nick Foles.)

In baseball, Mike Trout in 2017 and Hanley Ramirez in 2013 each had incredible seasons impacted by injury, and neither were serious contenders in MVP voting despite being ahead of or close to the winners in key stats.

The standards in Europe’s big five soccer leagues are different, but not by much. For one thing, most of them have only recently started awarding MVP or MVP-like awards – for most of the circuits’ histories, “player of the season” awards came from writers’ associations or specific magazines. But among the newer crop of league-issued awards, Messi’s 2024 participation level still falls short in every case but one.

And that one might be the most applicable to Messi’s 2024 – the thing to cite if you happen to believe that Messi deserves the Landon Donovan Award this year.

The 2017-18 season was Neymar’s first at PSG, and the Brazilian was at his peak, scoring 19 goals with 13 assists in 20 games. He fractured his metatarsal not long after the new year, though, and missed the rest of the season.

Like Messi in 2024, that season’s Neymar led the league in per-game performance. Like Messi in 2024, his absence didn’t hurt his team much in the competition – PSG still won Ligue 1 easily. Also strangely like Messi in 2024, Neymar experienced this sort of season with a Uruguayan strike partner (Edinson Cavani) who finished as the team’s top scorer.

The question, then, is by which standard will Messi be judged – the one covering the country and league in which he plays, or the one that has made an exception in cases just like Messi’s?

The answer could easily turn out to be the same one as usual: That Messi’s standard is his own, and others do not apply.