Messi's partner at Miami: Taylor once sat on the bench in England's non-league

Two things changed after Robert Taylor turned 16. Two things that, in different ways and at very different speeds, helped steer him down the road to South Florida and towards his current resting place: cloud nine.

That was the year the Finland international earned a scholarship at Lincoln City in England’s lower leagues – a giant step towards life in professional soccer. It was also around that time that Taylor began to watch Lionel Messi.

Fast forward just over a decade and the lessons mined in those days – on the substitutes’ bench and on the TV – have helped catapult Taylor towards stardom: he scored the first goal of Inter Miami’s Messi era and, over the past month, the 28-year-old has become of an unlikely hero of the revolution unfolding in Florida.

To think he was considering packing it all in. 'Oh, what’s the point anymore?' That was the only thing on Taylor’s mind for a while. After his move to Lincoln in 2011 had turned sour, after he had been shipped out on loan to Boston Town and Lincoln Moorlands Railway – two backwaters of England’s non-league – and begun to rot.

'I don’t even know what division Lincoln Moorlands are anymore,' Taylor tells Mail Sport. It’s the 11th tier. '(But) being on the bench for them, it’s a big slap in the face for your dreams of becoming a footballer…I was 18 at that point, I had to start playing games. And I couldn’t even get in the team.'

Taylor, now 28, told his parents he wanted to explore other career options. At that point, his only taste of the riches soccer could offer had come on the streets of Chesterfield.

His father, Paul, is British but had played soccer in Finland until the family moved to England when Robert was a teenager.

'I used to do freestyle and learn new tricks on a