Messi and Suárez Run a WhatsApp Group to Keep Tabs on Their Uruguayan Fourth-Division Club

The fact that Luis Suárez and Lionel Messi have a WhatsApp group with the front office and coaching staff of a Uruguayan fourth-division club says a lot about how they feel about the project. This is no symbolic gesture or photo-op commitment: it's daily contact, according to the man who knows it best from the inside.

Sebastián Taramasco, sporting director of Deportivo LSM since June 2025, spoke on Minuto 1 (Carve Deportiva) and offered several glimpses into how Suárez and Messi experience the day-to-day life of the club the Uruguayan forward founded in 2021, then known as Deportivo LS. Messi joined the project in May 2025, and since then, according to Taramasco, both players' involvement has only grown.

The first thing he clarified was as simple as it was striking: both Inter Miami players hired a company so they wouldn't miss a single match, no matter where the club plays in the division.

The matches that are televised, of course they watch. And the ones that aren't televised, the club itself has hired a company that films the games and streams them live, because they're pretty fanatical about following the match minute by minute, in real time.Sebastián Taramasco

That involvement doesn't stop at the screen. Taramasco was clear in describing the relationship with Suárez: there's ongoing, almost daily contact that runs through different levels of the club.

Contact with Luis is daily, both with us and with the coaching staff, and I'd even say with the players. I understand a lot of people might find it hard to believe the contact is that straightforward, but it's the kind of contact you'd expect in a working group, with a WhatsApp group that includes the club's management and another group where the coaching staff is also in touch with Luis. Luis is very present in everything, on a daily basis.Sebastián Taramasco

The club's structure also grew this year. Taramasco said they took on the challenge of building out five youth divisions, adding more staff and now working with an organizational chart that includes middle management. And Suárez, according to the sporting director, is "constantly on top of" those changes as well.

A Club Growing Little by Little in Ciudad de la Costa

Beyond his ties to the club's founders, Taramasco also spoke about the fans who show up for the team. Attendance, he said, varies depending on the context: when the team plays at home at the club's own sports complex, the response has been strong. The club already counts three thousand members and has a solid presence in Ciudad de la Costa, along with a significant number of kids in the youth and junior divisions.

For the division the club currently competes in, drawing between 500 and 600 fans is, according to Taramasco, a very good number. And he recalled that last year, while playing in the fourth division, they had peaks of more than a thousand fans in the stands.

The goal, the sporting director says, has a clear name: building a real identity with the local community. And while he admits it's a slow process, he says it's coming together little by little.