Messi assist sets Inter Miami on way to 2-0 win against New York City FC as back-to-back wins guarantee playoff place.<\/p>\n
Published On 15 Oct 202615 Oct 2026<\/p>\n
Lionel Messi set up a Rodrigo De Paul goal, and German Berterame snapped his scoring drought as Inter Miami booked their place in the MLS (Major League Soccer) playoffs with a 2-0 win over New York City FC on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Victory gave Cristian \u201cKily\u201d Gonzalez his first back-to-back wins since taking over as head coach last month, guaranteeing second-placed Miami at least a place in the wild card round of the competition in the United States, with five games left to play.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI\u2019m leaving happy. Obviously, there\u2019s a lot to improve, but we\u2019re making progress little by little,\u201d Gonzalez said.<\/p>\n
Messi \u2013 who had scored twice<\/a> on Saturday after returning to his club side from last week\u2019s emotional Argentina send-off<\/a> \u2013 was again a dangerous presence, playing a hand in both first-half goals.<\/p>\n In the 20th minute, Messi trapped the ball just outside the penalty area and passed it to De Paul, who found Suarez on the byline with a diagonal looping ball.<\/p>\n Suarez rolled it flat across the face of the goal, giving Berterame a simple finish for his first goal since May.<\/p>\n De Paul grabbed Miami\u2019s second on a quick counter with the final kick of the first half. Berterame brought the ball across the halfway line and was slightly fortunate to find Messi to his right with a mishit pass.<\/p>\n Messi drew in three defenders then laid it off with the outside of his left foot to De Paul, who slammed it high to the keeper\u2019s right.<\/p>\n In a goalless second half, Messi sent a curling effort from just outside the box over the bar.<\/p>\n As the game clock hit 90, Messi played a short corner to De Paul, who unleashed a shot from outside the box towards the far top corner. United States national team goalkeeper Matt Freese made a superb diving save, tipping the ball onto the post.<\/p>\n New York City, on a dire streak of just one win in their last 11 MLS games, at least had a chance for a consolation deep in stoppage time with a penalty.<\/p>\n Ian Fray brought down fellow substitute Talles Magno, who turned sharply away from goal and ran into the defender\u2019s trailing leg.<\/p>\n But Dayne St Clair made a brilliant save, flinging himself low and right to palm the ball around the bar.<\/p>\n It was Inter Miami\u2019s second straight clean sheet, after none in their previous 10.<\/p>\n \u201cI really liked how we handled dropping back into defensive shape. We didn\u2019t get caught out on the counter and were very aggressive, breaking up plays whenever a sudden transition from them looked likely,\u201d said Gonzalez.<\/p>\n \u201cPerhaps our ball circulation was a bit too slow at times, but that\u2019s just how the game played out.\u201d<\/p>\n Even with first-place Nashville out of sight this year in the Eastern Conference, the win consolidated Miami\u2019s grip on second and home-field advantage into the playoffs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Messi assist sets Inter Miami on way to 2-0 win against New York City FC as back-to-back wins…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[57,123,125,124,197,4571,4572],"class_list":["post-428393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-football","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-sport","tag-united-states","tag-us-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428393","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=428393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}