MIAMI (AFP) – Lionel Messi will aim to crown his MLS revolution by leading Inter Miami to their first domestic championship on Saturday in a blockbuster season finale against the surging Vancouver Whitecaps.
Two years after reshaping the landscape of Major League Soccer following his arrival in Florida, Messi is on the brink of delivering the title that Miami have craved since the club joined MLS as an expansion team in 2020.
After a rocky start to the season, the 38-year-old Argentine superstar has masterminded a dazzling Miami playoff run, with the club rattling in 17 goals in five games.
But blocking Messi and Miami’s path is a vibrant Vancouver side powered by German great Thomas Mueller, who has given added potency to an already dangerous Whitecaps attack since joining the club in August.
Mueller and Messi are two of four World Cup-winning players, along with Inter’s Sergio Busquets and Argentina’s Rodrigo De Paul, who will take to the field at Chase Stadium in Fort Lauderdale in an MLS Cup final that is a marketing man’s dream.
Mueller though has been at pains to play down suggestions of Saturday’s game being a duel between him and Messi.
“It’s not about Messi against Thomas Mueller,” he said after Vancouver’s scintillating 3-1 defeat of San Diego in the Western Conference final on Saturday. “It’s Miami against the Whitecaps.”
Miami’s presence in the final would have been unthinkable in April, when Javier Mascherano’s ageing side picked up only two wins in eight games and looked desperately short of energy.
That sequence of results included a 5-1 aggregate defeat by Vancouver in the CONCACAF Champions Cup.
‘CAN’T RUN, CAN’T DEFEND’
“They can’t run, they can’t defend, and there’s not a balance in the team,” was the withering verdict of one broadcast analyst, and few disagreed.
Yet fast-forward eight months and Miami are a side reborn.
The acquisition of Argentina midfielder De Paul has given Miami additional steel and mobility, while Mascherano’s decision to relegate the 38-year-old Luis Suarez to the bench in favor of the 19-year-old Mateo Silvetti provides much-needed pace in attack.
Whitecaps coach Jesper Sorensen said he is not placing too much weight on his team’s back-to-back wins over Miami in April.
“It almost seems like it was last season, right?” Sorensen said Thursday. “It’s a new game. It’s two teams that approach the game in their way, and we will see who comes out on top come Saturday.”
Messi, who has rarely spoken publicly in his two years in Florida, told ESPN Argentina in an interview published Thursday that he believes playing at home on Saturday could tip the final in Miami’s favor.
“We’re in a very good moment, the team is solid and excited,” he said.
“Playing at home is a plus. Even though we went through a stretch where we were very inconsistent and struggled to win back-to-back games, at home we always stayed strong.”
Lying in wait for Messi, however, is arch-nemesis Mueller. The 36-year-old from Bavaria is one of the few footballer’s in world football who can boast a winning record against Messi, winning seven of 10 games in which the two men have faced each other.
Those wins include the 2014 World Cup final, when Germany handed Argentina a shattering 1-0 loss in Rio de Janeiro, and Bayern Munich’s 8-2 humiliation of Barcelona in the 2020 Champions League quarter-finals.
“I look back in the past and I feel very comfortable with that, because that’s already in the books, and I had a lot of great experience in these games with my teams, so it was fun,” Mueller said of his previous games meetings with Messi.
“But it doesn’t really matter for Saturday, it’s a new game.”
