COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Lionel Messi and Inter Miami have another trophy, along with home-field advantage throughout the Major League Soccer playoffs.
Messi scored twice in the final minutes of the first half, goalie Drake Callender stopped a penalty kick in the 84th minute and Inter Miami beat the defending MLS Cup champion Columbus Crew 3-2 on Wednesday night, wrapping up the Supporters Shield given annually to the team with the best regular-season record.
It was Messi’s 46th major trophy won for club or country, extending his record for the most by any men’s soccer player in history. And it is the second he has won with Inter Miami, this Supporters Shield being added to the Leagues Cup trophy the Herons claimed shortly after Messi joined the club in 2023.
“We knew this was a group that could fight for this,” Messi said.
Luis Suarez also scored for Inter Miami, which will open a best-of-three first-round playoff series in the final weekend of October. If the team wins that series, it would have the right to host every match it plays the rest of the season — an Eastern Conference semifinal (scheduled for Nov. 23 or 24), the East final (Nov. 30 or Dec. 1) and the MLS Cup final on Dec. 7.
“We have a nice opportunity to go down in history … and now we think about what is coming,” Messi told Apple TV after the match. “We have a great advantage in that we play all the games at home, which was what we were looking for. I think that we are very, very strong at home.”
Also still within reach for Inter Miami: the best MLS regular-season mark ever. Wednesday’s win pushed Inter Miami’s record to 20-4-8 this season, giving it 68 points. If the club wins its final two matches — Saturday at Toronto and Oct. 19 at home against New England — it would finish with 74 points.
New England has the single-season points record, finishing with 73 in 2021.
Messi opened the scoring in the 45th minute, taking a long pass from Jordi Alba — his longtime teammate at Barcelona, the club with which Messi won 35 of his trophies — and splitting two defenders before somehow getting the ball past Columbus goalkeeper Patrick Schulte for a 1-0 lead.
And about five minutes into first-half stoppage time, Messi struck again on a free kick from about 30 yards out. Schulte seemed fooled, and Messi squeezed the ball between the goalie and the near post for a 2-0 lead.
“Dominant,” Inter Miami coach Gerardo “Tata” Martino said.
Diego Rossi scored in the first minute of the second half for Columbus to cut the lead in half, but it didn’t take long for Inter Miami to restore the two-goal cushion. Almost immediately after play resumed, Schulte was upended by one of his own defenders and Suarez sent a header into an empty net for a 3-1 edge.
Juan “Cucho” Hernández’s penalty kick in the 61st minute got Columbus within 3-2. But once again, the momentum didn’t last for long. Rudy Camacho was sent off for his second yellow card in the 63rd minute, meaning the Crew had to play with 10 men the rest of the way.
Didn’t matter. Columbus still created some big chances down the stretch.
A deflected ball in the 76th minute got across the box and onto the right foot of Mohamed Farsi — but his shot was blocked by Callender, who was perfectly positioned to protect the lead.
Then came more drama, when Inter Miami was called for its second handball inside the box — an automatic penalty kick — of the second half. Hernández picked the left side of the net, but Callender made the save look almost easy.
That save helped finish what Messi started.
It was the fifth two-goal game of the MLS season for Messi, who now has 17 goals in 17 league matches this season. He’s missed 15 of Inter Miami’s MLS matches in 2024, either because of commitments to Argentina’s national team or the two-month absence that he needed to recover from a badly injured ankle — an injury that happened during his nation’s run to the Copa America title in July.
Inter Miami, in MLS play this season, is now 10-1-6 with Messi in the lineup.
“Throughout the year we had many, many injuries, where we couldn’t all be together … but the group was getting the most out of every tough game,” Messi said.
The Crew and the LA Galaxy entered Wednesday still with a mathematical hope of passing Inter Miami in the race for the Supporters Shield, and Cincinnati was nine points back with nine points still possible.
But now, they’re all playing for second.
“Dec. 7 is what we want,” Martino said, referring to the date of the MLS Cup final. “But this is not insignificant today.”
___
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Copyright © 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.
