Cote: 12 years later, Beckham’s dream for Inter Miami finally came true | Opinion
It took 12 years for this dream to come true, 12 years for this team to flash signs outside and in this new stadium that read, ‘The wait is over. We’re home.’
Finally: Inter Miami is in Miami.
The long-awaited christening of Nu Stadium at Miami Freedom Park happened Saturday night -- but not entirely following the feelgood script -- in a 2-2 Major League Soccer draw with Austin FC. The dressed-in-pink new palace filled to its compact 26,700 capacity for its long-awaited debut, but neither the rushed-to-be-finished stadium nor the home team seemed all-the-way ready for opening night.
Miami trailed 1-0 fast, in the sixth minute, when the defense left Guilherme Biro unmarked for a downward header off a corner kick, gifting Biro the forever-history of the first goal in the new stadium. But the home team didn’t trail long.
Lionel Messi of course -- definitely as if scripted -- made it 1-1 in the 10th minute on a header from the center of the box into the upper right corner. Then (not in the opening-night script) it started to rain for a little bit.
Austin made it 2-1 in the 53rd minute when Jayden Nelson’s right foot finished a fast break into the bottom left corner.
But Miami at least salvaged the tie in the 81st minute as Luis Suarez, who’d just been subbed-in, finished with his left foot in close, redirecting a header by German Berterame off a Mateo Silvetti corner. (A would-be winning goal by Suarez seconds into extra-time was negated by offside.)
As if foreshadowing the result, Inter Miami coach Javier Mascherano warned his team about Saturday’s game, saying, “We have to be careful about how we manage our emotions. We know this is a celebratory day for the club inaugurating their new stadium -- the stadium they had dreamed of since the very beginning, and which took so much effort to build. But we must try not to get too caught up in all the festivities and hype surrounding the celebration. Instead we need to harness all that positive energy that will be in the air [and] channel it onto the pitch.”
Game started about 35 minutes late, but, hey, when you’ve waited 12 years for something, what’s another half hour? Miami superstar Marc Anthony sent chills with his national anthem. Pregame fireworks flew. The game and a new era of Inter Miami had begun, with not even the unexpected tie game able to overshadow the magnitude of the night.
There was a ribbon-cutting ceremony a couple of hours before the game, gigantic scissors slicing a pink ribbon. During pregame warmups David Beckham and the Mas brothers walked toward the end-zone where all the most rabid fans do the flag-waving and drum-beating and raised their hands to applaud the cheering fans. Beckham climbed over a short barrier and spent a couple of minutes with fans who leaned down from the stands as the man who started all this 12 years ago signed autographs and posed for selfies.
It was on a February morning in 2014 when British former soccer superstar Beckham stood on an outside deck at Perez Art Museum in downtown Miami to announce his intention to form an ownership group to buy an MLS franchise and put it in Miami. He wasn’t lying. Just took awhile.
Inter Miami at last joined the league six years later in 2020, that first season starting just as the Covid-19 pandemic did, but played those first six years in what was supposed to be a temporary home in Fort Lauderdale ... six years to fight through political obstacles and legal challenges, to finally settle on a site and then get a new stadium built
“It was a journey,” said MLS commissioner Don Garber, who was with Beckham 12 years ago and again at Saturday’s christening of the new stadium. “The journey really came to a conclusion today.”
The location of the new stadium is hardly ideal. The wait was way too long. But it was hard to complain Saturday because there was no way, 12 years ago, that Beckham would have dared dream that Inter Miami might someday play its first game in Miami not only as the reigning MLS champion -- but led as well by Messi, the greatest player in the biggest sport in the world.
As Beckham told the crowd before the opening-night game, “Thirteen years ago [before his announcement a year later] we had no fans, no team, no dream. Now we have a championship team and the best player in the history of soccer. To the fans, thank you for your patience and trust.”
(Quick aside: The club and presumably Messi himself are sort of quietly rebranding him from Lionel to Leo. It’s the ‘Leo Messi Stand’ at the new stadium, and the club in contact with media now refer mostly to Leo.)
The word MIAMI is spelled out in huge block letters painted across five sections of the new stadium. And this club finally being in this city was more than Beckham’s dream, it was destiny. Beckham’s money-men partners are Miami brothers Jorge and Jose Mas, billionaire businessmen, leaders of the construction giant MasTec, and sons of a Cuban exile leader. They are the Miami-version American Dream, and their team needed to be part of Miami as well.
“This dream was born on the shoulders of those who came before us,” said Jorge Mas of the new stadium
This marks the first new home for a major South Florida professional team in 14 years, since the Miami Marlins moved into their current ballpark in 2012. The Heat moved into their current building for the 1999-2000 season, the Panthers began playing at their current arena in the 1998-99 season, and the Dolphins opened in their current stadium in 1987.
Inter Miami’s new home that seemingly took forever to get built went up in only 16 months, ground-breaking to Saturday. It was a rush job, and it’s a stadium still not finished even as it opens. From the inside it looks complete. The pitch is pristine. It’s open-air but with every seat covered in case of rain by massive scaffolding and canopies.
“Spectacular. Breathtaking,” said Garber with the biased enthusiasm you’d expect from a league commissioner. “They’ve done the unthinkable.”
Messi called the new place “truly impressive” and said of Saturday’s christening, “It’s going to be a really beautiful day.”
Still, they were scrambling until the last moments to gain an occupancy certificate from the city. “It’s still got some work to be done,” as Garber put it.
Fans arriving were walking through an ongoing construction site. Massive cranes loomed high as the stadium just outside it. Huge construction vehicles were partly hidden behind tarp-covered chain link. It is still several weeks and likely longer from being fully finished. As it was the stadium was not really ready for the start of the season, with Miami playing its first five games (going 3-1-1) on the road to accommodate the last-minute stuff needed to make Saturday doable.
Neither is the location of the new stadium ideal -- or what was first envisioned, 12 years ago, as a waterfront facility nearer the Port of Miami or off Biscayne Bay neighboring the Heat arena. Instead it wound up neighboring Miami International Airport and its related traffic. MIA is one of America’s top-10 busiest with 53 million annual passengers (third in international passengers) and Inter Miami won’t play a home game, any day, any time, without that proximity as a constant reminder.
But nobody seemed bothered Saturday night by the new stadium’s location, or by the work left to be done finishing it, or by the long delay realizing this night, or even by settling for a draw.
The stadium is a beauty, and it was full of fans cheering for the reigning league champions, and cheering for Leo Messi.
And David Beckham’s dream came true, after all: Inter Miami is finally in Miami, and here to stay.
The MLS commissioner Garber in praising the new stadium called Miami “a club with global aspirations” and pretty much credited this franchise, Beckham to Messi, for leading the entire league’s momentum and evolution.
“David shined a light in our league,” said Garber. “And Leo’s taken that torch.”
This story was originally published April 4, 2026 at 10:13 PM.
