Inter Miami owner Jorge Mas opens up on MLS sanctions, Messi rumors, Miami Freedom Park
Inter Miami managing owner Jorge Mas, speaking publicly for the first time since Major League Soccer slammed the club with more than $2 million in fines for roster violations, revealed to the Miami Herald on Wednesday that the investigation began when the club, during its offseason front-office shakeup, self-reported a compliance issue with midfielder Blaise Matuidi’s contract.
Mas conceded that the ownership group, “not being experts” at the minutiae of the league’s complex salary structure, had entrusted player negotiations to former sporting director and chief operating officer Paul McDonough, who parted ways with the team on Dec. 9, 2020.
McDonough has been suspended from all MLS activities through the 2022 season for his part in Inter Miami’s missteps. Inter Miami replaced him with Chris Henderson from the Seattle Sounders, and also has put legal and financial officers in place to ensure roster compliance.
“I would never condone violation of any rules, whether I agree with some rules or not or how I think the league should evolve,” Mas said. “We need to abide by the rules, period, end of story. That’s etched in stone. I will always push the envelope, but within the envelope.
“We were new owners of an expansion team during COVID. Paul had extreme authority, maybe more than any sporting director in the league. Should there have been more checks and balances? Yes. Now, we have finance and compliance and legal people involved in all signings. That’s the past. It’s been addressed. We’re moving forward. We’re going to continue being extremely ambitious in what we do. This will not deviate us from the path to what we want to accomplish.”
Mas confirmed that he and co-owner David Beckham have had serious talks with Barcelona star Lionel Messi about joining the team as part of the Argentine playmaker’s 10-year contract negotiation with the Spanish club. Reports from Spain say Messi would play two more years with Barcelona through 2023, then join Inter Miami for two seasons, and return to Barcelona for six years in a still-to-be-determined role as a global ambassador or in the front office.
Messi recently purchased a $7 million condo in Sunny Isles Beach.
“David and I have been working really hard, we have aspirations of bringing the best players here and Leo Messi is a generational player, arguably the best player of all time,” Mas said. “I am optimistic Messi will play in an Inter Miami shirt because I think it will complete the legacy of the greatest player in our generation and will meet with the ambitions of the owners of Inter Miami to build a world class team.”
Inter Miami was close to signing Uruguayan star Edinson Cavani and Brazilian star Willian last summer, but both deals fell through. Mas believes the Messi deal will happen.
Messi’s total salary for his four remaining seasons as a player would be $293 million ($73 million per season) and details are still being worked out for his compensation after his playing days are done.
Messi’s salary is in another orbit from the top MLS salaries.
The three highest paid players in MLS this season are Mexican stars Carlos Vela of Los Angeles FC ($6.3 million guaranteed) and L.A. Galaxy’s Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez ($6 million) and Inter Miami’s Argentine forward Gonzalo Higuain ($5.8 million). But Inter Miami and MLS could work out a deal — as they did when Beckham joined the Los Angeles Galaxy — that would compensate him through sponsorships, jersey sales, and other business deals.
Mas also gave an update on the status of the Miami Freedom Park stadium project, Inter Miami’s proposed permanent stadium at the site of the Melreese golf course adjacent to Miami International Airport.
“We are extremely close and in the final stages of agreeing to a lease,” Mas said. “The lawyers have put in hundreds of hours in the past two weeks. I am very confident and hopeful we can find finality with the city on the lease. It’s been a tough negotiation, but I’m hopeful we can set a date by the end of June to bring the lease in front of the commission. We’re really close now.”
Miami City Manager Art Noriega said his administration aims to update commissioners on the negotiations in the coming weeks.
“The negotiations are ongoing, and our hope is to begin to brief our elected officials by the end of the month and have it placed on a Commission agenda shortly thereafter,” he said.
While he is dealing with Miami Freedom Park, Mas has been handling the aftermath of the MLS sanctions.
The club was fined a league-record $2 million and Mas, as managing owner, was fined an additional $250,000.
Mas cooperated with investigators, but he was fined because the league said he did not disclose his knowledge of the violation with Blaise Matuidi’s contract at the appropriate time required under league rules.
The club also will suffer a reduction of $2,271,250 in allocation money (league funds available to bolster rosters) for the 2022 and 2023 seasons.
McDonough was suspended from MLS-related activities through the 2022 season for his role in not ensuring roster compliance with the signing of five players, including French World Cup winner Matuidi from Italian power Juventus, and young defender Andres Reyes from Colombian club Atletico Nacional.
Both should have been classified as elite “Designated Players” within the league’s complex salary structure. By underreporting all the details of their compensation packages, they were able to slip under the DP line, making room for the other three DPs — Matias Pellegrini, Rodolfo Pizarro, Gonzalo Higuain.
Had Matuidi and Reyes been classified properly, the team would have been carrying five Designated Players, which is two above the league limit. Mas said the plan all along was for Pellegrini to be classified as a “Young DP,” but his contract was too expensive for that designation. “We missed, Paul missed on that, so it put us in a major quandary,” Mas said.
Also, the team was penalized for having undisclosed agreements such as agent fees related to the signings of Argentine players Leandro Gonzalez Pirez, Nico Figal and Julian Carranza. The league said none of the players were aware that rules were being violated or that their salaries were underreported.
“We as an ownership group were told we could bring Matuidi in as a TAM [Targeted Allocation Money] player for 2020 and then we would deal with his designation in 2021-22 as a DP moving forward, and we said, ‘OK, perfect, we approved the spend on his package, that was that,” Mas said. “None of the owners are experts on MLS rules, so that’s why we brought Paul on board to guide us through this.”
McDonough came from Atlanta United and had a reputation for building expansion teams and being a guru in the MLS salary structure.
MLS, as a single-entity league, has complicated salary rules to ensure no owner can load the roster with expensive megastars. Each team has a salary budget (cap) of $5.21 million, the maximum salary is $651,250 with three exceptions for “Designated Players” whose compensation can exceed that amount. There are also slots for “Young DPs” and “Homegrown Players,” whose salaries count less toward the team salary cap.
The league also offers each team up to $1.9 million in General Allocation Money (GAM) and up to $2.72 million in Targeted Allocation Money (TAM) — two mechanisms teams use to buy down salary budget charges and bring in expensive players without taking DP spots.
“There were many ways to report everything, fix our roster issues and remain in compliance, and why they weren’t is beyond me,” Mas said. “Now Chris has to come in deal with the problems, and that’s a shame.”
Miami Herald writer Joey Flechas contributed to this report.
This story was originally published June 9, 2021 at 1:26 PM.