Cristian Kily Gonzalez Once Lined Up Beside Lionel Messi For Argentina, Now He Is Coaching Him

• Cristian “Kily” Gonzalez has officially taken charge of Inter Miami after receiving his work authorization, replacing interim coach Guillermo Hoyos on a contract through June 2028.
• Gonzalez shared the field with Lionel Messi as an Argentina teammate in 2005 World Cup qualifying, making him only the third person to later coach Messi after playing alongside him, joining Lionel Scaloni and Javier Mascherano.
• Gonzalez says the club takes Messi’s opinion into account on soccer decisions, telling reporters that “when you have a player of that class, you have to listen.”

From Teammate to Boss, Twenty Years Later

Cristian “Kily” Gonzalez lined up alongside Lionel Messi for Argentina in 2005 World Cup qualifying, two players from different generations of the national team sharing a locker room years before either man knew what the other would become. Twenty years later, Gonzalez is Messi’s boss. He landed in Miami from Argentina on Tuesday morning, led his first training session with Inter Miami that same day, and received his work authorization in time to take his seat on the bench for the club’s Campeones Cup match against Cruz Azul at Nu Stadium on Wednesday night.

His appointment makes Gonzalez only the third person to have played alongside Messi as a teammate and later serve as his head coach, joining Lionel Scaloni, who coaches Messi with the Argentina national team, and Javier Mascherano, who managed him in an earlier stretch of his career. It is a short list, and it says something about how much of Messi’s soccer life has stayed within the same small circle of players who came through Argentine soccer around the same time he did.

Replacing an Interim Coach Mid-Season

Gonzalez takes over from Guillermo Hoyos, who had been running the team on an interim basis, and arrives with a contract that runs through June 2028, a long-term commitment for a club built around a 38-year-old superstar whose own timeline with the team is not open-ended. The length of the deal suggests Inter Miami is thinking about the era after Messi as much as the years he has left on the field, even as his coach’s first priority is making sure this season and the ones immediately after it go well.

From the summer of 2023, when Messi joined Inter Miami, the club has won the Leagues Cup that same year, the Supporters’ Shield in 2024, and the MLS Cup in 2025, a rapid transformation for a franchise that had never won a trophy before he arrived. Whoever coaches the team inherits both the opportunity that comes with having the best player of his generation on the roster and the pressure of being judged against a trophy case that filled up fast.

“You Have to Listen”

Gonzalez was asked directly at his introductory news conference how much influence Messi’s opinion carries in the club’s soccer decisions, a question every Inter Miami coach before him has faced in some form. His answer did not try to dodge the obvious.

“When you have a player of that class, one that has been around lots of great players, you listen,” Gonzalez said. “You have to listen.” He said he speaks regularly with senior players about tactical details and their comfort on the field, adding that “the opinions of players of this caliber, and here I’m referring to Leo, are fundamental to the club.”

It is a rare thing for a head coach to say publicly, and it reflects the unusual reality of coaching a team built entirely around keeping its biggest star happy and productive in what is likely the final act of his playing career. Gonzalez did not describe it as a burden. He described it as simply how the job works when the player in question is Messi.

A Coach Who Knows Him From the Inside

What separates Gonzalez from most coaches who take over a team with a superstar attached is that he has actually been in the same changing room as Messi, pulling on the same national team jersey, back when Messi was still a teenager breaking into the senior Argentina setup in 2005 World Cup qualifying. That shared history does not guarantee results, but it does mean Gonzalez arrives without the getting-to-know-you period that a coach with no personal connection to Messi would need.

Scaloni and Mascherano both found ways to make that same history work for them, Scaloni building a national team culture around Messi that delivered a World Cup, and Mascherano working with him at club level after their own playing careers finished. Gonzalez now gets his own chance to show whether shared history with the best player in the world translates into results in Major League Soccer, at a club that has shown it can win trophies but is still working out what a fully settled coaching setup looks like.

A Debut Under the Lights at Nu Stadium

Wednesday’s Campeones Cup match against Cruz Azul gives Gonzalez an immediate stage, a competitive fixture against a Liga MX opponent just one day after his first training session with the group. There was no soft introduction, no exhibition to ease him in. He went from landing in Miami to taking charge of a live match inside 48 hours, work authorization arriving just in time for him to be present on the sideline.

For a club that has built its identity around Messi from 2023 onward, the appointment of a coach who once lined up next to him for their country is as symbolic as it is practical. Gonzalez now has a contract that could keep him in Miami well past whatever Messi decides about his own playing future, and a working relationship with his best player that started two decades before either man ever set foot in South Florida.

What Comes Next

Inter Miami’s front office has made no secret of wanting the club’s new stadium project and its soccer results to move forward together, and hiring a coach with a direct personal tie to Messi fits a pattern the ownership group has followed from the day he arrived. Jorge Mas, the club’s co-owner, has spoken previously about wanting Messi to help open Miami Freedom Park once it is completed, tying the roster’s biggest decisions to the timeline of Messi’s own commitment to the franchise.

Gonzalez inherits a squad that reached the MLS Cup final and won it in 2025, meaning expectations are no longer about proving the project can work. They are about sustaining it. A coach who spent his own playing days lining up alongside some of the best players Argentina has produced now has to prove he can organize a team around the best of them all, starting with a midweek cup match and continuing through whatever the rest of this MLS season brings.

Messi’s next appearance for Argentina is set for October 6 against Benin, part of the send-off window that will close out his international career. Until then, his soccer life is entirely in Miami, under a coach who has known him from long before either man imagined this is where their story would lead.