MIAMI (AP) \u2014 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
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tUp 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
\n See AP\u2019s full soccer coverage here\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI (AP) \u2014 Lionel Messi scored his MLS-leading 19th goal of the season as Inter Miami played first-place…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[25123,2205,123,125,124],"class_list":["post-398349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-ap-sports","tag-associated-press","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398349","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=398349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}