Lionel Messi wasn’t about to let it happen again.
Not this year. Not twice in a row.
It feels silly to say it or even to think it. The Argentine No. 10 has played on the sport’s biggest stages. He’s failed and succeeded when the stakes are at the absolute highest. But Inter Miami’s stunning first-round exit from last year’s MLS playoffs taught Messi an important lesson.
The reality is that the low-pressure aura of the MLS regular season is far different from the higher stakes of the playoffs. The pace of the game is different. Just changing your mindset to play in a game that matters — even that has to change.
That isn’t just for Messi. After the Chicago Fire FC beat Orlando City SC in a wild-card game last month, Chicago’s Hugo Cuypers said something in his postgame news conference that stood out.
“It was nice, honestly, the last two or three days to prepare for a pressure game,” Cuypers said.
To prepare for a pressure game.
For basically eight months of the MLS regular season, pressure games are mostly nonexistent, not with the playoffs as inclusive as they are. Last year, Inter Miami got caught napping despite having the league’s best regular-season record. They lost on the road in Atlanta in what was a naive performance. That opened the door for the upset at home that ended the club’s — and Messi’s — season early.
The legendary No. 10 didn’t forget.
“It’s not going to be easy,” he said in a recent interview with Fabrizio Romano for 433 and Apple TV. “We have the experience from last year when we finished first in the regular season and then got knocked out in the first round. I think the playoffs are a completely different competition — tighter games, teams are more cautious and focused. But we’re prepared to fight and try to win it. We all want the MLS Cup.”
He wasn’t going home early this time around.
Messi scored twice and set up Inter Miami’s third and fourth goals to lead the team to a dominant 4-0 win over Nashville SC in the decisive Game 3 of their first-round Eastern Conference playoff series on Saturday night. Messi has a famously good memory. He’ll log slights and onboard losses and then avenge them. Nashville paid the price this time, not just for Atlanta United FC’s upset last year, but for the fact that Messi and Miami got caught unprepared in 2024.
Messi scored twice and helped set up two other goals in Inter Miami’s pivotal Game 3 win over Nashville SC. (Chandan Khanna / AFP / Getty Images)
Now, Messi has his eyes set on an MLS Cup. Miami has eight goals this postseason. Messi has scored or assisted on all eight of them. Good luck betting against him — even on the road against a tough FC Cincinnati team in the conference semifinal.
It was clear early on against Nashville that Messi is competing not just with the opponent in front of him, but with the constant battle that so many people underrate: Messi must always be aware of his legacy. Steven Gerrard and Andrea Pirlo could come to MLS and have poor performances, and it was shrugged off as understandable. MLS is a retirement league for those players, people would say. They weren’t 100 percent committed.
Messi doesn’t have that luxury. He isn’t being measured against his peers from his own era. He’s being held up against the greatest players ever. Every action for him — every loss, every missed opportunity — is judged on those considerations.
In the big picture, what Messi does in MLS doesn’t come close to ranking against anything he accomplished at Barcelona or Argentina. But it still matters for Messi. The 2023 Leagues Cup and 2024 Supporters’ Shield aren’t enough. Those trophies are overshadowed by failures in the Concacaf Champions Cup and last year’s MLS playoffs. Messi needs the MLS Cup to fully validate his move to Miami, and he’s playing like he knows it.
Messi was his typical brilliant self against Nashville. His first goal — which relieved any tension in Chase Stadium after just 10 minutes — was him doing what he has done all season long en route to what is surely going to be rewarded with his second consecutive MLS MVP award. He picked up the ball on a Nashville turnover, turned and drove at their defenders and, surrounded by four players, slotted a shot through Walker Zimmerman’s legs inside the near post. Nine minutes later, he raised eyebrows after a cheeky nutmeg of Edvard Tagseth, the first of two times victimizing the Norwegian on the night. It was a hint of how ready he was for the night.
😮💨🪄 pic.twitter.com/diKyy56Z52
— Inter Miami CF (@InterMiamiCF) November 9, 2025
In the 39th minute, it was Messi again with a finish, this time easily depositing the ball in the back of an empty net off the efforts of Jordi Alba and Mateo Silvetti — the latter taking the place of the suspended Luis Suarez in Miami’s starting XI. Messi set up the third goal in the 73rd minute by combining with Alba, who assisted on Tadeo Allende’s first goal, then directly assisted Allende’s second in the 76th.
Messi understands that these playoffs will be looked at as an era-defining moment. This postseason is the final act of Messi in MLS 1.0. His good friends and longtime teammates Alba and Sergio Busquets are retiring. They were a part of his move here. They were part of building Miami into a global brand along with him. Alba admitted after the game that it felt different because it could have been his last game. Messi undoubtedly wants to make sure their careers end the right way.
Most importantly, Alba and Busquets’ impending departures make the inevitable end of his own playing days feel all the more real.
“The truth is yes, it’s hard,” Messi said in the Apple interview. “First, because the moment is approaching and that with whom you played your entire career, they’re already leaving. (It’s a reminder) that at whatever time, it’s going to be one’s moment. … Surely it’ll be a difficult moment for them, too, because leaving everything behind is never going to be easy. Also, what I was talking about, the fear I have of that moment that you have to say, ‘This is it.’ One sees that moment closer and closer when all these things happen around, so a lot of things go through your head.”
The performance on Saturday sent a shot to the rest of the Eastern Conference and MLS. Good luck getting in Messi and Miami’s way. Saturday’s game felt like the first step toward what has felt inevitable from the moment Messi announced he was coming to MLS.