Lionel Messi scored his first two goals since the World Cup and took the career scoring lead in the Leagues Cup as Inter Miami overcame an early deficit to beat Atl\u00e9tico San Luis 4-2 on a rainy Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
The match at Nu Stadium was delayed 30 minutes in the second half because of lightning in the area.<\/p>\n
Messi scored in the 11th and the 44th minutes. He has 14 goals in 12 Leagues Cup matches \u2014 one ahead of Los Angeles FC’s Denis Bouanga for most in the tournament’s four-year history.<\/p>\n
Telasco Segovia and defender Micael also scored, and Noah Allen had three assists as Inter Miami extended its unbeaten streak to eight matches.<\/p>\n
Messi returned to Miami’s starting lineup in his second match since the World Cup, where he led Argentina to its second straight final appearance before La Albiceleste lost 1-0 to Spain. The 39-year-old played 37 minutes as a substitute in a 2-2 draw with the Columbus Crew on Saturday.<\/p>\n
After being held off the scoresheet against Columbus, it didn’t take Messi long to make an impact on Wednesday. He fired a long cross from Allen past Andr\u00e9s S\u00e1nchez to equalize after David Rodr\u00edguez put San Luis ahead with a header four minutes into the match. Messi finished from close range later in the first half and assisted on Micael’s header in stoppage time.<\/p>\n
Rafa Llorente also scored for San Luis.<\/p>\n
Messi led Miami to the Leagues Cup title in 2023 shortly after his arrival with the club. Inter Miami reached the final again last year, losing 3-0 to Seattle in a match that ended with a brawl involving Luis Su\u00e1rez. The veteran forward appeared to spit toward a member of the Sounders\u2019 staff and grabbed at least one Seattle player by the neck during the melee, resulting in a six-match tournament suspension.<\/p>\n
That means Su\u00e1rez, who has seven goals in the past four matches, was not available Wednesday and will not play in this year’s tournament.<\/p>\n
Reporting by The Associated Press.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BROWSE BY Lionel Messi scored his first two goals since the World Cup and took the career scoring lead in the Leagues Cup as Inter Miami overcame an early deficit to beat Atl\u00e9tico San Luis 4-2 on a rainy Wednesday night. The match at Nu Stadium was delayed 30 minutes in the second half because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7173","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\/7173","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=7173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}