Lionel Messi can’t be stopped—or even fouled

Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

On the night last week when Lionel Messi notched a goal and five assists against the New York Red Bulls, the presence of any Red Bulls at all felt merely incidental. Each time he picked up the ball, one of the greatest soccer players of all time found himself staring at more open lanes than the Florida Turnpike.

In the buildup to those five assists, Messi took nearly 20 touches before playing the killer pass to a teammate. But no defender touched Messi even once. Instead, they backed off, guessing what he might do next and trying to cut off passing lanes.

In other words, they let Messi do whatever he wanted.

For Messi, who will turn 37 next month, this wasn’t the story of just one night. It’s been the entire season, his first full year in the U.S. Not only does he now lead Major League Soccer in goals (10) and assists (12), he’s also cruising through this American campaign untroubled by defenders. More than ever before in his career, Messi’s opponents are too spooked or too overmatched—or both—to even try to take the ball off him.

“Messi makes the difference, always,” Miami coach Tata Martino said.

MLS defenders are learning the hard way what the rest of the world has known for 15 years: when you dive in on Messi, one of two things can happen. You can either be embarrassed by a moment of trickery, or you can risk injuring the most valuable asset that Major League Soccer has ever had. It’s hard to say which would be more damaging to a defender’s career.

So instead, defenders these days simply tend to stand back. This season, Messi has been dispossessed just 1.3 times per game on average, according to data from WhoScored. That’s barely half as often as the 2.5 times per game he lost the ball to a defender in Spain’s La Liga from 2009 to 2021 and still lower than the 2 times a game he was dispossessed over his pair of seasons at Paris Saint-Germain in France.

When defenders can’t win the ball fairly, their other recourse has historically been to foul him. But MLS teams aren’t managing that either. This season, Messi is only suffering a foul once every 61 minutes in a Miami jersey. Compare that to how often he was hacked down during his prime in Spain (every 30 to 35 minutes, on average) and a larger pattern emerges: the closest defenders are getting to Messi these days is when they ask for his shirt at the final whistle.

“This is the biggest problem against this quality: when you have open space against Lionel Messi,” Red Bulls head coach Sandro Schwarz said.

Coaches who have faced him know that putting defenders near enough to smell Messi’s shampoo is the only hope they have of stopping him. Give him too much respect or too much room and he can wreak havoc in an instant. Former Saudi Arabia manager Hervé Renard memorably reminded his players of this in a fiery halftime speech at the 2022 World Cup. The man-to-man coverage, he felt, was a little lax.

“Take your phone!” he shouted at one player. “You can take a picture with him if you want!”

Opposing teams have always known this. They were prepared to resort to extreme tactics even as far back as 2006, when Messi was first emerging as a Barcelona starter. Chelsea’s scouting report ahead of a Champions League knockout game that year said as much. “If option is to foul him,” then-scout Andre Villas-Boas wrote, “it is important to do it outside the box and as early as possible.”

But that relies on getting close enough to foul him in the first place.

Part of the challenge stems from simple respect for everything that this 5-foot-7 genius from Argentina has accomplished—the league titles in Spain and France, the Champions League trophies, the hundreds of goals, and the 2022 World Cup. But some of it is also pure bemusement at how Messi operates on the pitch.

Much of the time, he seems to be wandering as he drifts into wide swaths of open field away from the action. He doesn’t help his teammates defensively, nor does he do anything resembling pressing. Yet the Messi Stroll has always been a key feature of his game.

He paces around, bides his time, and springs into action from unconventional spots between defenders. The moment anyone gets close, Messi can pick out a pass to a teammate and the problems really begin—especially when that teammate is his former Barcelona teammate Luis Suárez. No player in the world has been on the receiving end of more Messi assists.

“I think it surprises a lot of people,” Suárez said after Messi set him up for three goals against New York. “At this age, he’s still trying to improve himself…and you can only feel the joy of what he’s doing for soccer.”

Write to Joshua Robinson at Joshua.Robinson@wsj.com