Lionel Messi is about to achieve a new milestone in his long and successful career. Inter Miami, with the former Barça stars, won their away match against Toronto this Saturday (0-1) with a goal from Ecuadorian Leonardo Campana after a pass from Luis Suárez in stoppage time. With this, they only need to win at home the last game of the regular season, against the New England Revolution, penultimate in the Eastern Conference, to beat the points record of the MLS, the American soccer league, which is held precisely by their next rival.
He Miami Barça He already assured himself on the penultimate day of being the best in the regular phase. With this, the club achieves the Fans’ Shield for the first time (Supporters’ Shield), an official trophy awarded to the best team in the league. With this, he enters the Concacaf Champions Cup and, predictably, the 2025 Club World Cup, representing the United States as the host country. However, the MLS champion, the most important title, is not decided in the regular phase, but in the playoffs.
Messi’s first match in the qualifiers will be broadcast on a giant screen in Times Square, New York, on October 25, which gives an idea of how the Argentine star has contributed to popularizing the competition in the United States.
Inter Miami has 71 points and the record of New England, against whom they will play at home on October 19, is the 73 points they achieved in 2021. The Garzas, as the Florida team is known, will not be able to count in beginning that day with the competition of Messi, who will foreseeably be called up by the Argentine team.
The team led by Tata Martino, and which also has Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba in its ranks, has been able to overcome the absence of Messi when the Argentine was playing in the Copa América. Messi closes the regular season with 17 goals and 17 assists in 18 games. He is, without a doubt, the most decisive player on the team, but the team has also added the scoring talent of Luis Suárez, the team’s top scorer with 18 goals in 26 games, to which he adds seven assists. The Uruguayan was also absent during the Copa América.
field advantage
With the last game remaining, Inter Miami has 21 wins, 8 draws and 4 losses. Being first in the regular season standings gives you home field advantage during the playoffs. The Inter Miami first round will be played in the best of three games against an opponent yet to be decided in a previous play-off phase between the eighth and ninth places in the Eastern Conference. Then, the conference semifinals and final and the MLS final are played in a single match. If Inter progresses through the stages, they will play all of those games at their Chase Stadium venue in Fort Lauderdale (Florida). The final takes place on December 7.
“We have an important advantage, since we will play all the games at home, which is what we intended,” Messi said this week after the victory against the Columbus Crew that assured them first place. “I think we are very strong at home. “I think being at home gives us a great advantage, and now we just have to prove it,” he insisted. The Fans’ Shield (Supporters’ Shield) It is the Argentine’s 46th official title and the second he has achieved with those from Miami, who had never won anything until his arrival.
Messi led Inter Miami to win their first title in August 2023 in a dramatic penalty shootout. It was the Leagues Cup, a tournament in which the 47 teams of the American MLS and the Mexican Liga MX participate. The Argentine scored his tenth goal in seven games in that tournament in the final and was crowned top scorer and best player. In the league, however, his arrival did not occur in time to put the team in the fight for the title. Inter Miami was second to last in the Eastern Conference.
In this Saturday’s match, Messi, Suárez and Busquets started on the bench and came out in the second half. However, the possibility of qualifying for the points record was out of their hands. Five minutes of stoppage time in the second half began with the score 0-0. And it was in the third minute of that extra time when Luis Suárez crossed from the left wing so that Campana stopped the ball with his thigh and finished with an acrobatic volley that gave Inter the victory and that allows them to caress the record of points of the MLS.
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