AN IMAGE of Inter Miami players Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez, Jordi Alba, and Sergio Busquets zoomed around the world in the early hours of Thursday morning as one of the greatest footballers of all time and his cohort of former Barcelona teammates won their first Major League Soccer title.

A 3-2 win against Columbus Crew was enough for Inter Miami to ensure they finished at the top of the overall 2024 MLS standings with two games to spare.

Alongside the players was the Supporters’ Shield, the trophy awarded for such an achievement that is unique in both the US sports landscape and in global football.

It was only present thanks to the efforts of supporters of FC Cincinnati, the team who won it last season, who drove it up from Cincinnati to Columbus on the off chance Miami would secure the title there.

This happened partly because the very idea of a trophy for the overall league winner was introduced not by MLS but by the supporters themselves. It is they, through the Supporters’ Shield Foundation and Independent Supporters Council, who remain its custodians.

In US sports, the champion of any given season is usually considered to be the team that wins the post-season playoffs, which in MLS start later this month, rather than the team with the best “regular season” record.

In much of the rest of the world of football, the winner of the season-long league campaign is crowned the champion.

One difficulty in crowning an overall league champion in MLS is that the schedule is not the same for every team.

There are two separate league tables, the Eastern Conference and Western Conference, in which every team plays each other at least once home and away.

On top of this, there are also a handful of cross-conference games. This means not all teams play the same opponents the same number of times.

Regardless, topping the overall league table that combines the Eastern and Western Conference standings is still a significant achievement, and there has been a desire to crown a regular season league champion ever since the inaugural season of MLS in 1996.

During that 1996 season, the team with the best regular season record, Tampa Bay Mutiny, were knocked out of the playoffs in the Eastern Conference final by a DC United team that eventually went on to win the MLS Cup in the final LA Galaxy.

Although the idea of an award for the team with the best regular season record had been knocking around soccer mailing lists during that inaugural season, it is perhaps no surprise that it was a Tampa Bay Mutiny fan, Nick Lawrus, who is credited with raising the issue to a level where something might be done about it.

During the 1997 season, Kansas City Wizards fan Sam Pierron headed a committee that failed with its initial attempt to create a league leaders’ title due to disagreements around what constituted the best regular season record (back then, draws didn’t exist in MLS and penalty shootouts were used to decide which team would win a point if the scores were level).

But when Pierron picked up the idea again at the beginning of the 1998 season, it was eventually successful. An endorsement and a contribution of $500 from ESPN’s MLS commentator Phil Schoen helped move it forward, as did a contribution from MLS commissioner Doug Logan.

The first Supporters’ Shield was awarded to DC United in 1999 with retroactive titles going to Tampa Bay Mutiny, DC United, and LA Galaxy for the three previous seasons.

There have long been debates as to the importance of the Shield compared to other trophies such as the MLS Cup and US Open Cup, but regardless of the uneven schedule, the winner of the Shield can be considered the best and most consistent team over the course of an entire season.

Messi being pictured with the trophy is perhaps the biggest endorsement yet for the Supporters’ Shield, but it was fitting that it was only in place for such global publicity due to the efforts of supporters’ group representatives.

Zach Blandford, president of Cincinnati supporters’ group The Pride Cincy, and Brandon Sanders, vice-president of the Supporters’ Shield Foundation and president of Cincinnati supporters group Die Innenstadt, had driven the Shield up from Cincinnati earlier in the day.

They were in the stands as Inter Miami defeated their Ohio rivals, and just hours later, the same trophy that had taken the journey with them up Interstate 71 was in the Inter Miami dressing room being held aloft by Messi.

If it weren’t for supporters, the images beamed around the world would have just been one of thousands of other pictures of Messi and the former Barcelona players at Inter Miami. With the Shield alongside them, they were something special.

The Shield signified success. Even if fans had not been able to watch the games that are mostly behind an Apple TV paywall, or are unaware of how Messi is doing in his end-of-career US adventure, this picture with a trophy was the update needed.

But this Inter Miami season, at least on the field, hasn’t been all about Messi. The Argentine has missed 15 of the 32 games played so far, either through injury or due to his involvement in the Copa America (MLS continues during international breaks).

Despite this, Inter Miami have remained the best team in the league.

League seasons are a test of consistency, support, squad management, quality, unity, coaching, sports science, and everything else that goes towards a team achieving its goals.

A league season can also signify the financial power behind a team — how much money they have to sign players and pay top wages to the top players.

It could be said that Inter Miami, as the team who have been able to attract Messi, Suarez et al, won the Supporters’ Shield because of such power, even within MLS’s restrictive squad-building rules and salary cap, but their head coach Tata Martino has also used his squad effectively.

In a run of nine games from June through to September, Inter Miami won eight of nine games played in Messi’s absence. It was ultimately this run that put them in a position to ease to the Supporters’ Shield title on Messi’s return (by contrast, they have only won two out of five games with Messi back in the side).

Inter Miami may not win the playoffs. Cup competitions, which is what the MLS Cup is, are by their very nature more unpredictable than league seasons. An underdog can beat a favourite on their day, which is part of the drama and charm of the format.

But whatever happens in the upcoming playoffs or in 2025, the final year of Messi’s current contract, Inter Miami have a trophy to celebrate from their Messi era, thanks to the supporters.