Inter Miami has acquired another talent to their roster. Lionel Messi will play alongside another former Barcelona teammate at DRV PNK Stadium next season, following the unveiling of Inter Miami’s latest signing. Luis Suárez has inked a one-year contract with the MLS team, joining fellow former Camp Nou luminaries Messi, Sergio Busquets, and Jordi Alba.

But it will be nearly four years since Messi and Suárez last played together when they enter the pitch for Inter Miami. Suárez, who turns 37 in January, has played for three clubs in three countries during that period. How different a player is the version of Suárez set for a Miami reunion with Messi now that he has faced the inevitable affects of aging?

Suárez left Barcelona in the summer of 2020, one year before Messi moved to Paris Saint-Germain. He joined Diego Simeone’s Atlético Madrid, a club whose on-field attitude of win-at-all-costs tenacity and defensive organization contrasts sharply with the Camp Nou’s elegant passing play. Nonetheless, the Uruguayan prospered.

“There were certainly high expectations when Suárez arrived at Atlético, and we can’t forget that he’d scored 16 league goals for Barcelona the previous season, despite not playing as much,” says Euan McTear, a Madrid-based football journalist. “As a result, most fans believed he could contribute. The concern was how much longer he’d be able to play at the highest level and avoid injury. Fortunately, Atlético’s risk paid off.”

After appearing to have lost some of his sharpness in his final months with Barcelona, the former Liverpool striker was revitalized by the move and, if his performances were any indication, determined to show that his fall had been much exaggerated. Suarez scored 21 goals in 32 games to help Atlético win their first La Liga title in seven years.

“He was a consistent contributor throughout,” McTear says, “even though Atlético dropped off in the second half of the season as the pressure increased.” Suárez, on the other hand, rarely feels pressure and kept his cool in the last weeks. He was one of the few players on the team who had previously won the league, and his expertise was vital, especially because he scored the game-winning goals against Osasuna and Real Valladolid in the final two weeks.

“If Barcelona let Suárez go because they feared he would decline, they were partially correct. They simply miscalculated the timing. Suárez’s deterioration came gradually, as it does for everyone, but it wasn’t until the second half of 2021-22 that he lost his starting spot.”

Suárez returned home to join his boyhood team, Nacional of Montevideo, Uruguay, when his two-year contract with Atlético concluded in the summer of 2022. The 138-cap Uruguayan legend led Nacional to the Primeira Division title seventeen years after making his professional debut for the club as an 18-year-old, scoring eight goals in sixteen matches in a limited six-month tenure. Then it was over to Brazil to Grêmio in December 2022.

In his final season in Brazil, Luis Suárez scored 26 goals and made 17 assists.

“It was huge news for a Brazilian club to get a player of Suárez’s status,” says Robbie Blakeley, a Rio-based football journalist. “Some people were concerned about his physical state. His knee troubles are widely documented. But he’s a world-class player, one of the best center-forwards of the twenty-first century, so when he arrived, there was more enthusiasm than anxiety.

“He scored his first goal five minutes into his debut and had a hat-trick by halftime.” That really pumped up Grêmio fans and Brazilians everywhere.”