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<\/p>\nAFP, FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida<\/p>\n
Argentine superstar Lionel Messi on Wednesday bagged the 900th goal of his glittering career, but could not prevent Inter Miami from crashing out of the CONCACAF Champions Cup on away goals after a 1-1 draw with Nashville.<\/p>\n
Messi, 38, scored his milestone goal after just seven minutes to put Miami 1-0 up in the second leg of their last-16 clash in the regional club competition.<\/p>\n
However, Nashville\u2019s Cristian Espinoza lashed in a 74th-minute equalizer to make it 1-1 on aggregate, and after holding Miami at bay for the remainder of the game, the visitors from Tennessee advanced to the quarter-finals on the away goals rule.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Photo: AFP<\/p>\n
Miami\u2019s exit was a bittersweet ending to what had promised to be a night of celebration after Messi\u2019s early opener in what was the club\u2019s final game at their Chase Stadium home in Fort Lauderdale.<\/p>\n
Messi\u2019s strike took the Argentine\u2019s tally to 81 goals for the MLS champions following his move to Florida in 2023.<\/p>\n
The eight-time Ballon D\u2019Or winner previously scored 672 goals for Spanish giants Barcelona, 32 for France\u2019s Paris Saint-Germain and a further 115 international goals for Argentina.<\/p>\n
Goal No. 900 came 21 years after Messi\u2019s first goal in senior soccer, when he scored for Barcelona in a 2-0 win over Albacete Balompie in 2005 as a fresh-faced 17-year-old.<\/p>\n
Messi still has some way to go before he catches his great rival Cristiano Ronaldo, the 41-year-old Portuguese superstar who is on 965 career goals.<\/p>\n
Speaking ahead of Messi\u2019s 900th goal, Miami manager and former Argentina and Barcelona team-mate Javier Mascherano described the star\u2019s goals total as \u201cinsane.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been lucky enough to see most, or many, of the goals he\u2019s scored, much closer than you all, and that\u2019s a privilege,\u201d Mascherano said. \u201cThe number we\u2019re talking about [900] is insane, and that\u2019s why Leo is a one of a kind.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AFP, FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida Argentine superstar Lionel Messi on Wednesday bagged the 900th goal of his glittering career,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[249,251,250,91795,91794],"class_list":["post-198031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news","tag-the-taipei-times","tag-91794"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198031","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=198031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}