{"id":398339,"date":"2026-09-13T02:56:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T02:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/398339\/"},"modified":"2026-09-13T02:56:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T02:56:11","slug":"messi-scores-his-19th-mls-goal-as-inter-miami-draws-2-2-with-nashville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/398339\/","title":{"rendered":"Messi scores his 19th MLS goal as Inter Miami draws 2-2 with Nashville"},"content":{"rendered":"

MIAMI \u2013 Lionel Messi scored his MLS-leading 19th goal of the season as Inter Miami played first-place Nashville to a 2-2 tie on Saturday night. <\/p>\n

Messi appeared to have Miami on its way to its first win over Nashville this season when he scored with a left-footed shot to make it 2-1 in the 62nd. Nashville’s Sam Surridge equalized with his second goal of the night just a minute into stoppage time to keep his club unbeaten in four meetings with Miami this season.<\/p>\n

The draw also kept Nashville nine points ahead of second-place Miami in the Eastern Conference standings.<\/p>\n

Nashville struck just four minutes into the match when Surridge finished Andy Najar\u2019s pass for his 14th goal of the season.<\/p>\n

The score was evened in the 19th when Nashville defender Reed Baker-Whiting scored an own goal on a corner kick.<\/p>\n

Messi had a shot blocked from outside the box in the 27th minute and sent a free kick wide shortly afterward before breaking through in the second half.<\/p>\n

Rodrigo De Paul found Messi outside the penalty area, and the eight-time Ballon d\u2019Or winner sent a left-footed shot into the bottom-left corner for his 19th MLS goal of the season.<\/p>\n

Miami was looking to avenge a 4-1 loss to Nashville in the teams\u2019 previous meeting on Aug. 15. Nashville also eliminated Miami from the Concacaf Champions Cup earlier this season.<\/p>\n

Up next<\/p>\n

Nashville: Hosts the Chicago Fire next Saturday.<\/p>\n

Inter Miami: Hosts Liga MX champion Cruz Azul on Wednesday in the Campeones Cup.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

\nSee AP\u2019s full soccer coverage here<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI \u2013 Lionel Messi scored his MLS-leading 19th goal of the season as Inter Miami played first-place Nashville…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[26695,144466,1660,123,125,124,158697,27823,1656,110],"class_list":["post-398339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-andy-najar","tag-cruz-azul","tag-lionel-messi","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-reed-baker-whiting","tag-rodrigo-de-paul","tag-sam-surridge","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398339","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=398339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}