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Messi recovered and played in Inter Miami’s first match of the 2026 MLS season against LAFC over the weekend. Messi played the full 90 minutes in Inter Miami’s 3-0 loss.<\/p>\n
After the game, the Inter Miami team trained ahead of the friendly match against Independiente del Valle and traveled to Puerto Rico. Messi participated in the team training and traveled with the team.<\/p>\n
Inter Miami landed in Puerto Rico yesterday, and Messi was seen at the open training session with the team at the Estadio Juan Ram\u00f3n Loubriel in Bayamon, Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n
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Lionel Messi of Inter Miami waves during a training session at Estadio Juan Ram\u00f3n Loubriel on February 25, 2026 in Bayamon, Puerto Rico. (Photo by Leopoldo Smith\/Getty Images)Photo by Leopoldo Smith/Getty Images<\/p>\n
(Photo by Leopoldo Smith/Getty Images)Lionel Messi to play in Inter Miami vs Independiente del Valle<\/p>\n
Lionel Messi is set to play in the friendly match between Inter Miami and Independiente del Valle in Bayamon, Puerto Rico. The Argentine star is fit and is expected to play in the match.<\/p>\n
Messi apologized to fans in Puerto Rico due to his injury that caused the match date to be changed. Messi is certain to play the match, but he is not expected to play the full 90 minutes.<\/p>\n
Messi is expected to play at least 45 minutes, as the club staff will not want to risk him for the MLS match against Orlando City this Sunday. Messi is not starting the match as the attackers will be Luis Suarez and Daniel Pinter.<\/p>\n
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This story was originally published by Athlon Sports<\/a> on Feb 26, 2026, where it first appeared in the Soccer<\/a> section. Add Athlon Sports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before Inter Miami plays against Orlando City for their second MLS match of the season this weekend, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[81273,81274,71519,81272,10073,63686,1660,1658,123,125,124,4786,4102],"class_list":{"0":"post-170872","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami","8":"tag-bayamon","9":"tag-estadio-juan-ramon-loubriel","10":"tag-friendly-match","11":"tag-independiente-del-valle","12":"tag-inter-miami","13":"tag-lafc","14":"tag-lionel-messi","15":"tag-luis-suarez","16":"tag-miami","17":"tag-miami-headlines","18":"tag-miami-news","19":"tag-orlando-city","20":"tag-puerto-rico"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}