Orlando held the upper-hand over Inter Miami last season, claiming a 3-0 victory in Fort Lauderdale before prevailing 4-1 on home soil. Messi figured in the first of those fixtures, but sat out the second with a hamstring injury.<\/p>\n
He enjoyed his first visit to Inter & Co Stadium, with Mascherano pleased to see his team claim long-awaited bragging rights over geographical neighbours. He added: \u201cThey were very, very difficult for us last season; it\u2019s a very strong team with a really good manager. To win here, we have to play a perfect game. The atmosphere is big here, they put us under pressure. As a player I loved playing in this type of game.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes we overanalyse games, and the real difference is in the emotions. It is about resilience, commitment and the will to win. I congratulate my players for showing that spirit and will to win even when we were down 2-0.\u201d<\/p>\n
After suffering a humbling 3-0 defeat to Son Heung-min and LAFC<\/a> in their first competitive game of 2026, Inter Miami\u2019s defence of their MLS Cup crown is now up and running. They will be back in action on Saturday when facing D.C. United – with their opening five games of the new season taking place on the road as work is completed at their new Freedom Park home<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Orlando held the upper-hand over Inter Miami last season, claiming a 3-0 victory in Fort Lauderdale before prevailing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174733,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[5429,10133,8003,82768,139,4786,82716,141,140],"class_list":["post-174803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-inter-miami-cf","tag-l-messi","tag-major-league-soccer","tag-o-pareja","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-city","tag-orlando-city-vs-inter-miami-cf","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174803","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=174803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}