Messi, Miami Get Past NYCFC At Packed Citi Field

 

NYCFC and Inter Miami, led by Lionel Messi (#10) take the field. Photo by Jason Schott.

Lionel Messi scored a pair of goals to lead Inter Miami CF to a 4-1 win over New York City Football Club in front of a crowd of 40,845 at Citi Field.

Messi now has 24 goals on the season, and he delighted the many people there to see him when he scored in the 74th and 86th minutes to put the game out of reach.

The win also helped Miami leap both NYCFC and Charlotte to move into third place in the MLS Eastern Conference with 55 points and a record of 16-7-6.

NYCFC is now 16-5-10, with 53 points, while Charlotte is in fourth because they also have 53 points (17-2-12) and a tiebreaker to put them into fourth place.

This game was highly competitive from the start, as Miami received a corner kick in the 10th minute. Messi took it, and he fired it into the center of the box, where Maximiliano Falcon fired a shot to the top left corner, which was saved by NYCFC goalkeeper Matt Freese.

Just a few minutes later, Messi set up Luis Suarez, and he took a header that just missed the top left corner of the net.

NYCFC then had what turned out to be their best chance of the night in the 29th minute when Kevin O'Toole sent a pass to Nicolas Fernandez, who got into the Miami zone on a breakaway and he was all alone in the box, and fired one towards the net, and it went off the right post.

Miami then had a big chance in the 39th minute when Messi took a free kick from just outside the box, and he sent it over "the wall," and Freese made a brilliant save as he went to his left to deflect it away.

Lionel Messi firing in a shot on this free kick in the 39th minute. Photo by Jason Schott.

Then, in the 43rd, after the ball bounced around midfield, Miami showed their precision, as Sergio Busquets sent a pass down the center of the field to Messi, who sent it ahead to Baltasar Rodriguez, who had a head start to race past NYCFC defenders and fire one past Freese to make it 1-0 Miami.

It stayed that way deep into the second half, when Miami kind of duplicated that play. Only this time, it was Busquets, who found Messi on the break at the top of the box, and he flicked it over Freese to make it 2-0 in the 74th minute.

Luis Suarez added to that lead in the 83rd minute, followed by a second goal from Messi a few minutes later to make it 4-0.

Lionel Messi on the pitch at Citi Field. @InterMiamiCF.

NYCFC Head Coach Pascal Jansen, in his postgame press conference, said of the importance of his team playing a full 90 minutes, "Obviously (forward) Alonso (Martinez) was brought on (in the 61st minute because...At that point, I think it was still 1-0 when he came on. Looking for that equalizer was the idea behind that. The last 15 or 20 minutes when the goals fell, you could also see in the first half we got punished for one minor mistake. That's when they made the 1-0, because it's a simple loss of possession form our side, and it's open in the middle and they punish us for that. The last 15 minutes we got two similar situations going down the middle, unfortunately. That's what I said to my boys also just now. 

"When you play against a team like this, the first 45 minutes we played pretty decent. We had two, three good moments in the game in order to get ourselves on the scoreboard. It was determined by one error and then we got 1-0 down into halftime. Those errors were also part of the second half and punished severely. That's the quality of Miami also, because in the moments of transition, they're so fast and they show good quality and punish us for those moments."