FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — There are any number of ways for Lionel Messi and Inter Miami to wrap up the Supporters’ Shield and claim the No. 1 overall seed for the MLS Cup playoffs that start later this month.
Here's the easiest path: Win on Wednesday.
The preseason Major League Soccer title favorites — with a lineup featuring Messi, Luis Suarez, Jordi Alba and Sergio Busquets — are on the brink of another trophy. They can clinch the Supporters’ Shield, given to the team with the top MLS regular-season record, on Wednesday night with a win at Columbus.
“It’s a great opportunity for us," Inter Miami midfielder Matias Rojas said. “We're taking it step by step. This team has built itself one step at a time. So, on Wednesday, we will go to win and achieve that goal.”
It would take total collapse over their final three matches for Inter Miami to not go into the playoffs with the No. 1 overall seed, and the Supporters’ Shield would become the second trophy in club history — following the Leagues Cup title that was won in 2023, not long after Messi arrived and instantly turned the club into a global phenomenon.
A Miami team — the long-defunct Fusion — has won the Supporters’ Shield before. The Fusion won it in 2001, which became the club's final season because of attendance and revenue problems. Inter Miami has never been close to the top of the MLS table before; it was 19th out of 26 teams in 2020, 20th out of 27 teams in 2021, 12th out of 28 teams in 2022 and 27th out of 29 clubs last season.
This year was expected to be totally different and has delivered. The club opened 3-2-1 in its first six MLS matches and has gone 16-2-7 since. It is already, by far, the best record in club history and a 3-0-0 finish would give Inter Miami the MLS mark for most points in a regular season.
They could finish with 74, one more than New England's 73 in 2021.
“When a team like Inter has 65 points and has lost only four matches all season and you compare it with teams from previous seasons, we should recognize all the good things we have accomplished this season," Inter Miami coach Gerardo “Tata” Martino said.
And it's not all Messi.
He's missed 15 of Inter Miami's MLS matches this season, 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 9-1-6 with Messi in the lineup. That's probably not a surprise; his teams have been hard to beat for the better part of the last 20 years. This part is the surprise: Inter Miami is 10-3-2 when Messi hasn't played in league matches.
With Messi, the team averages 2.06 standings points per match out of a possible three, and the team averages 2.13 standings points without him. It makes no sense for the record to be better without the eight-time Ballon d'Or winner and consensus greatest player ever in the lineup, but somehow, those are the numbers.
That proves the Inter Miami lineup isn't just Messi and a bunch of other guys, goalkeeper Drake Callender said.
“That's just, I think, the versatility of our team," Callender said. "We gained depth throughout the season because a lot of these guys didn’t have many minutes to start the year. But they get more experience now, we have more options, and we have more versatility in how we want to play. So, I think we’re in a pretty good spot going forward.”
If the clinch — which comes with home-field advantage throughout the entirety of the MLS Cup playoffs, all the way to the final — doesn't come on Wednesday, Inter Miami's final two regular-season matches are at Toronto on Saturday and then at home against New England on Oct. 19. Inter Miami's playoff run will start at home on the final weekend of October.
The primary focus is the playoff title, the MLS Cup. But the No. 1 seed also matters, Alba said.
“We hope to win against a great team like Columbus, and we will go in with a winning mentality,” Alba said. "Winning the Supporters’ Shield would be a nice achievement in the club’s history, but in the end, what we want to win is MLS Cup.”
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