Lionel Messi’s legacy was long secured when he came to Inter Miami and joined Major League Soccer. He’d won a World Cup, won dozens of trophies, was generally considered the greatest player in the sport’s history.<\/p>\n
He didn’t need an MLS Cup.<\/p>\n
But he wanted one \u2014 and got it.<\/p>\n
Messi and Inter Miami have completed their ascent, beating the Vancouver Whitecaps 3-1 on Saturday in the MLS Cup final for the franchise’s first championship. It came 2 1\/2 years after the legend arrived in South Florida, a move that stunned plenty of onlookers at the time.<\/p>\n
He set up the title-clinching goal with a 72nd-minute assist to Rodrigo De Paul, a play where Messi stole the ball and threaded a pass through a tiny gap in a wall of Vancouver defenders. De Paul got it in stride, pushed it into the far corner of the net \u2014 and Messi went airborne to hop into his arms a few seconds later, all smiles.<\/p>\n
And as the final minutes ticked away, Inter Miami’s pink-clad fans \u2014 most wearing Messi’s No. 10 on their backs \u2014 stood and stomped and cheered. South Florida has seen NFL and NBA and Major League Baseball and NHL titles in the past.<\/p>\n
It’s a soccer town now, too. Messi made that happen. Tadeo Allende scored in the sixth minute of stoppage time \u2014 off another Messi assist, of course \u2014 to make it 3-1.<\/p>\n
Inter Miami became the 16th franchise in the league’s 30-year history to win an MLS title. And this extends a run of parity for MLS, which has seen five different franchises win championships in the last five years and eight franchises claim a title in the last nine seasons \u2014 only Columbus has won twice in that span.<\/p>\n
Reporting by The Associated Press.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
Want great stories delivered right to your inbox?\u00a0<\/i>Create or log in to your FOX Sports account<\/u><\/i> and follow leagues, teams and players to receive a personalized newsletter daily!<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
POPULAR SEARCHES BROWSE BY Lionel Messi’s legacy was long secured when he came to Inter Miami and joined Major League Soccer. He’d won a World Cup, won dozens of trophies, was generally considered the greatest player in the sport’s history. He didn’t need an MLS Cup. But he wanted one \u2014 and got it. Messi […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}