{"id":540832,"date":"2026-03-14T23:09:22","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T23:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/540832\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T23:09:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T23:09:22","slug":"lionel-messi-rested-for-inter-miamis-game-at-charlotte-fc-source","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/540832\/","title":{"rendered":"Lionel Messi rested for Inter Miami’s game at Charlotte FC – source"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inter Miami<\/a> head coach Javier Mascherano has decided to rest captain Lionel Messi<\/a> for Saturday’s MLS regular-season match at Charlotte FC<\/a> on Saturday night at Bank of America Stadium, a source confirmed to ESPN.<\/p>\n

The choice to rest Messi comes from Mascherano, and not due to any current injury.<\/p>\n

The Argentine captain last played for Inter Miami on Wednesday night against Nashville SC<\/a> in the first leg of the Concacaf Champions Cup round of 16, drawing 0-0 at GEODIS Park. Messi played the entire match.<\/p>\n

Messi’a Miami and Argentina teammate Rodrigo De Paul<\/a> will also be absent from Saturday night’s action, a source confirmed to ESPN.<\/p>\n

Lionel Messi will not feature for Inter Miami against Charlotte FC.\u00a0Scott Taetsch\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Messi and de Paul both formed part of the previous Inter Miami squad that played at Bank of America Stadium in September 2025, when the team fell 3-0 in Charlotte. The stadium’s artificial grass did not play a decisive role in Mascherano’s game-day squad, with Messi, Jordi Alba<\/a>, Sergio Busquets<\/a> and De Paul all featuring in the regular season match.<\/p>\n

Following Saturday’s game, Inter Miami will host Nashville for the second-leg match on March 18 at Chase Stadium for a ticket to the tournament’s quarterfinals.<\/p>\n

Though Mascherano previously admitted the Concacaf Champions Cup is a priority for Inter Miami, the coach has insisted he will be treating all competitions equally throughout the year.<\/p>\n

“We’re not a team that chooses which competitions to play in; we’re obligated to compete in all of them,” he said. Clearly, the Champions League is the only competition the club normally plays in that we’re missing, and it’s generating a lot of excitement for all of us. Now, what we can’t allow is for this to become an obsession. It’s one thing to be excited, another to be obsessed.”<\/p>\n

Inter Miami currently boasts six points in MLS<\/a> after earning two wins and one loss to start the 2026 campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Inter Miami head coach Javier Mascherano has decided to rest captain Lionel Messi for Saturday’s MLS regular-season match…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-540832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}