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Hello! A reality check for Lionel Messi and Inter Miami. Major League Soccer is up and running.

Coming up:

Inter trouble: Messi fumes after LAFC humble Miami 

Inter Miami’s MLS Cup defence is not exactly off to a flyer. Matchday one began with a chasing in Los Angeles, and ended with a raging Lionel Messi chasing the referee and his assistants through a side door at the LA Memorial Coliseum. The outlook can only improve from here.

Messi’s complaints were wafer-thin after a 3-0 licking by LAFC, but that didn’t stop him from venting hard in this video captured by a Mexican journalist after the final whistle. The scale of the headloss was best summed up by Luis Suarez attempting to reason with Messi, before the Argentine did anything on the Suarez scale of stupid.

Major League Soccer has since stated that Messi violated no rules by going after the match officials, and is therefore unlikely to face any punishment. The area he walked into for a matter of seconds was not a restricted space, nor was it the locker room used by the referee. But the incident did a good job of underlining how bad an evening Miami experienced in LA.

The MLS Cup holders have the muscle and financial clout to bully many of their opponents, but LAFC aren’t lightweights. While LAFC’s wage bill falls short of Miami’s, it’s the second highest in the league and up over $30m (£22.2m), enough to hire talent like Son Heung-min. They rejected out of hand a January bid by Miami for striker Denis Bouanga, who scored LAFC’s second goal on Saturday, above, and assisted their third.

Not only that, but the attendance against Miami cleared 75,000, the second-largest crowd MLS has ever seen. All the pieces added together are enough to remind Messi that he won’t easily have it his own way this season. And doesn’t he know it.

San Diego start strong, teens star for NYRB

Let’s have a quick glance at the other main takeaways from the opening weekend in MLS:

San Diego put the league on notice with a 5-0 rout of Montreal. True, Montreal aren’t remotely fancied, but last year’s Western Conference finalists didn’t miss a beat.
Houston Dynamo are well-fancied after an active offseason, and a 2-1 win over Chicago Fire was a satisfying start for them
In a regular-season first, New York Red Bulls started three players under the age of 18 at Orlando City: Matthew Dos Santos (17), Adri Mehmeti (16) and Julian Hall (17). The youthful line-up paid off with a deserved 2-1 victory.
The shiny new toys at Minnesota United and San Jose Earthquakes are still waiting to be unwrapped. James Rodriguez didn’t feature in Minnesota’s 2-2 draw at Austin, and a visa delay rendered Timo Werner unavailable for San Jose’s 3-0 win against Sporting Kansas City. They’ll appear soon, though, and Paul Tenorio wants to see the trend of big-name arrivals in MLS continue.

Oh, and significant transfer news: Josh Sargent is about to bust out of the penitentiary at Norwich City. Sources have told The Athletic’s Tom Bogert that Toronto FC will pay $22m to sign the USMNT forward, ending a messy stand-off. Sidelined and desperate to leave, Sargent hasn’t kicked a ball in anger since January 4.

News round-up
Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter has criticised the distribution of matches at the 2026 World Cup, claiming too many have been awarded to the United States. Seventy-eight of the tournament’s 104 fixtures will take place in America, with the rest split between Mexico and Canada.
Violence and unrest broke out across Mexico following the death of drug lord Nemesio Ruben Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho”. Guadalajara, one of the country’s World Cup host cities, was heavily affected, and a Liga MX match scheduled for Queretaro tonight has been called off. Authorities in Guadalajara say they’ve had no contact from FIFA about security concerns yet.
FIFA’s planned Fan Fest in New York/New Jersey, meanwhile, has been cancelled less than four months before kick-off. Members of the public who bought tickets will be reimbursed.
After all the recent reports about him being unsettled in Saudi Arabia, Cristiano Ronaldo says he’s committed to his current club, Al Nassr. “I’m happy here, I want to continue here,” he insisted.
Sheffield Wednesday have become the first team in the history of the English football league to be relegated in February. An 18-point deduction made their descent from the Championship inevitable.
James Milner broke the Premier League’s all-time appearance record on Saturday, turning out for the 654th time in Brighton’s 2-0 victory over Brentford. To date, his top-flight career spans a staggering 23 years.
Brazilian side Red Bull Bragantino apologised after one of their players criticised the appointment of a female referee for a cup game, which Bragantino lost. Defender Gustavo Marques said there was “no point in us playing… (if) they allow a woman to referee a game of this size”.
Spurs shocker: Tudor period starts with Arsenal defeat as relegation looms

Much of last week was spent asking whether Arsenal were losing their bottle. The answer at this juncture is no, or not to gauge by their 4-1 drilling of Tottenham Hotspur yesterday. They’re just about keeping Manchester City’s wolf from the door.

Perhaps a more pertinent question in north London circles is whether Tottenham are going down. They wilted as the second half went on and their cushion over the Premier League’s bottom three ebbs away game by game, cut now to a mere four points. You’d be hard-pressed to find a team in worse form, because there isn’t one.

They’ve rolled the dice by sacking Thomas Frank, and they’ve placed an inordinate amount of faith in Igor Tudor by inviting him to keep them afloat. It’s right to point out that meetings with Arsenal won’t decide Tottenham’s fate — but it’s Fulham and Crystal Palace up next and if those fixtures go wrong, I’d be sounding the alarm.

No such introspection at Leeds United who, despite being only two points better off than Spurs, have tackled the Premier League with a more coherent plan. It’s not easy selecting Leeds’ best bit of recruitment because a lot of it has worked — but a top-notch free kick against Aston Villa on Saturday (below) explained why many at Elland Road would pick midfielder Anton Stach…

Wedding hitch: German fan’s pitch-side proposal just start of huge plot twist

Kaiser proposing to his boyfriend at a Koln game on January 30 (Photo courtesy of FC Koln)

Those of you with an interest in Germany’s Bundesliga might have seen the story of the Koln supporter and amateur referee who proposed to his boyfriend before a match at home to Wolfsburg last month. To his delight, and the relief of the crowd looking on, his partner said yes.

From there, the plot behind a seemingly happy event got messy and not a little unsavoury. Pascal Kaiser, the fan who made the pitchside proposal, above, has since been accused of stealing money and other items from a local bar where he once worked. Kaiser denies the allegations against him, which are under police investigation.

In the meantime, he was reported to have experienced a stream of homophobic abuse online and been physically attacked in the street — but those claims are also in dispute. German media report that the public prosecutor in Koln is investigating a man “suspected of faking bodily injury offences to his disadvantage and of having previously written and sent threatening messages allegedly addressed to himself”.

The details are impossible to lay out in their entirety here, but Seb Stafford-Bloor has us covered with the lowdown on a seriously tangled web. Wedding bells are in the air. Trouble is afoot, too.

Around TAFCCatch a match

(Selected games, times ET/UK)

Premier League: Everton vs Manchester United, 3pm/8pm — USA Network/Sky Sports.

Serie A: Fiorentina vs Pisa, 12.30pm/5.30pm; Bologna vs Udinese, 2.45pm/7.45pm — both CBS, Paramount+, Amazon Prime, DAZN/DAZN.

La Liga: Alaves vs Girona, 3pm/8pm — ESPN, Fubo/Premier Sports.

And finally…

Late on Saturday, a trying night for St Mirren — routed 5-0 by Motherwell in the Scottish Premiership — got worse again when Richard King was dismissed for an off-the-ball incident involving Motherwell’s Callum Slattery.

The ‘incident’ consisted of King wafting a hand at Slattery, who did a cracking job (above) of making zero meaningful contact look like a stiff right hand from Mike Tyson. Not only did King get a red card but VAR backed up the call on review. Tell me I’m wrong in thinking this is lunacy.