By ALANIS THAMES<\/p>\n
MIAMI GARDENS \u2014 Rodrigo De Paul scored on an assist from Lionel Messi and Germ\u00e1n Berterame added a goal to send reigning champion Inter Miami back to the MLS playoffs with a 2-0 win over New York City FC on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
Luis Su\u00e1rez also assisted for Inter Miami, which has won back-to-back matches for the first time since July.<\/p>\n
Miami missed the postseason when Messi arrived in 2023, but has reached the playoffs the past three seasons, losing in the first round to Atlanta United in 2024 then beating Vancouver last year to win the club\u2019s first MLS Cup.<\/p>\n
Wednesday\u2019s victory came after Miami routed DC United 4-0 last Saturday on a pair of goals from Messi and Su\u00e1rez, and it was the second league win for new coach Cristian \u201cKily\u201d Gonz\u00e1lez, who took over Sept. 16.<\/p>\n
Berterame scored in the 20th for his eighth goal of the season. De Paul doubled Miami\u2019s lead right before the end of the first half. Dayne St. Clair denied Nicol\u00e1s Fern\u00e1ndez on a penalty in the final minute of the match for his second straight clean sheet.<\/p>\n
It has been a rollercoaster year for Messi, who led Argentina to its second straight World Cup final and announced his retirement from international soccer a month later. Now, he has a chance to cap it with another trophy.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Miami: At Atlanta United on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By ALANIS THAMES MIAMI GARDENS \u2014 Rodrigo De Paul scored on an assist from Lionel Messi and Germ\u00e1n…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[10073,114,1660,123,125,124,2062,110],"class_list":["post-428183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-inter-miami","tag-latest-headlines","tag-lionel-messi","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428183","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=428183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}