Wayne Rooney is right: Lionel Messi may be a miracle-worker but the GOAT won't find it easy to turn Inter Miami into MLS Cup contenders

Beckham and the Mas brothers have achieved the seemingly impossible by signing the star of the 2022 World Cup and the commercial and brand benefits are already obvious. Miami's social media numbers have sky-rocketed over the past month, meaning they are now the fifth-most followed team in the United States, while tickets to see him play are being exchanged for thousands of dollars online.

It's also easy to see why both Adidas and Apple were also willing to help make this deal happen. Shirt sales should go through the roof, while the rights to MLS have suddenly become a whole lot more valuable.

In that sense, this deal is about far more than Miami. Jorge Mas effectively acknowledged that by introducing Messi not only as Miami's new No.10 - but also America's. As jerseys go, that's a pretty heavy one to wear. He's effectively being asked to carry an entire league on his shoulders.

Obviously, his mere presence in America will do wonders for MLS and its brand. Messi, after all, has more Instagram followers than every team in his new championship combined.

Make no mistake about it, then: this is a bigger deal than either Beckham or even Pele plying their trade in the States. He may be 36 years of age and has lost the explosive pace that made him unstoppable in his youth - but he remains, by some distance, the most intelligent player in the game, a genius still capable of wowing the world and bamboozling the very best defenders with his feints and quick feet, as he so thrillingly underlined in Qatar just over six months ago.

The question is, though, whether even a football god like Messi will be able to save Miami from mediocrity - because this is not a good football team. Miami have won just five of their 22 MLS games so far this season - and the last of those victories came all the way back on May 13.

The arrival of former Barcelona team-mate Sergio Busquets should certainly help, particularly with key midfield duo Gregore and Jean Mota currently sidelined through injury, while new coach Tata Martino hasn't just worked with Messi before, he also has MLS experience, having guided Atlanta United to MLS Cup glory in 2018.

Josef Martinez played a pivotal part in that triumph and the Venezuelan should certainly benefit from Martino's appointment. He is Miami's top scorer this season - but with just six goals to date, which is a poor return for a player who struck 35 times in 39 appearances during Atlanta's title-winning campaign.

The hope is that Martino will be able to once again coax the very best out of a controversial character who has lost his way in recent years. One imagines that Martinez will also be reinvigorated by the prospect of receiving one slide-rule through ball after another from Messi, meaning there is an undeniable chance of the two South Americans forming a formidable partnership up front.

Messi certainly won't solve Miami's problems at the back, though - and neither will the seemingly imminent acquisition of another Barca old boy in Jordi Alba, who was always better going forward than moving in reverse, even before his legs began letting him down in his final few seasons at Camp Nou.

Miami, then, will ultimately need more than attack-minded ageing stars to sort out a defence that has kept only two clean sheets in MLS this season - both of which arrived in the first two games.

Messi, of course, has a way of elevating all of those around him. He proved that once again at the World Cup. But he was also surrounded by players who were as talented as they were tenacious, a group willing to do his dirty work while he focused almost exclusively on working his magic.

He won't have anything like the same standard of supporting cast in MLS but, encouragingly, he's clearly in the mood to make more memories in Miami.

"I can't wait to start training," he declared. "I feel the same desire I've always had to compete, to win and to help [Miami] continue to grow. We are going to have a good time and great things are going to happen."

But that is very much dependent upon Miami building a team around him that will actually allow him to show why he remains the best player on the planet. Because MLS is no retirement league. It can be a serious strain on players, even those long used to the rigours of elite-level European football.

"Messi won't find it easy here," DC United manager and former England captain Wayne Rooney told The Times. "It sounds mad, but players who come in find it's a tough league. The travelling, the different conditions in different cities, and there's a lot of energy and intensity on the pitch."

Messi, remember, struggled terribly to settle in Paris and while he should, in theory, find life in Miami far more to his liking for a variety of cultural reasons, there is no guarantee that he will find it any easier on the field at DRV PNK Stadium than the Parc des Princes.

The pressure will be intense. Both time and patience will be required. And maybe a little more of that holy water - because immediately turning Miami into MLS Cup contenders would represent Messi's most remarkable miracle yet.