A sellout crowd of 72,610, accustomed to cheering on the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium, got to witness arguably the greatest futbol player in the world Saturday night as Lionel Messi led Inter Miami to a much-needed 3-2 win over Sporting KC.
Watching from a suite was three-time Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes, a part-owner of Sporting KC, who had a brief greeting with Messi before the game.
Miami was desperate for a victory, going winless in its previous five games, including a crushing 3-1 loss to Monterrey in Mexico in the Champions Cup quarterfinal three days prior.
“It was very important for us to get out of that rut of getting ties, losses, making mistakes, and we were able to do that, to regain the feeling that we can win at the end of a long, tough week,” Inter Miami coach Tata Martino said.
The electric crowd, largest ever for a soccer game in the state of Missouri and fourth-largest in MLS history, did not get the win it wanted, but it got to see Miami’s quartet of stars as Messi, Luis Suarez, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba were all in the starting lineup.
Sporting usually plays at 18,400-seat Children’s Mercy Park, but the game was moved to Arrowhead because Messi is such a big draw.
He delivered, providing a sublime assist on Diego Gomez’s goal in the 18th minute and then a long-range cracker of a shot with his left foot in the 51st minute. Messi has seven goals and seven assists in eight games this year.
Suarez scored the game winner 20 minutes later after Gomez stole the ball from a Kansas City defender deep in Sporting territory and crossed it to Suarez for the tap-in.
“We are very happy with this victory, it helps a lot after the game we lost against Monterrey,” Gomez said. “This will help us for what comes up next in the season. It was indescribable how it felt playing in such a big, beautiful stadium.”
Martino was pleased with the play of Gomez, the Paraguayan rising star who starred in the pre-Olympic tournament and has drawn the attention of scouts in Europe.
“The performance of Gomez is a highlight of this team, all of his work in winning balls, he is understanding the game more and more, and I do think he is a player who has already been noticed in Europe and surely will continue to.”
When Messi scored his goal, Martino pumped his clenched fists. And when it was all over, Martino exhaled while shaking hands with KC coach Peter Vermes, visibly relieved that they will head back to South Florida with three points.
The only concern is that Alba left the game late with an apparent right hamstring injury. Martino said he had not spoken to the medical team and did not yet know the extent of the injury.
With the win, Miami moved into first place in the Eastern Conference ahead of the New York Red Bulls with four wins, two losses and three ties. Miami has scored 19 goals and allowed 14 for a plus-five goal differential heading into next Saturday’s home game against Nashville.
“Being first in the standings is comforting, especially with a long week ahead,” Martino said.
Vermes had said before the game that there was no way to completely shut down Messi, and joked that he asked FIFA if he could field 15 men. After the game, he explained why Inter Miami is different from other MLS opponents.
“We lost the ball three times and they just have the quality that, when you do, they can punish you,” Vermes said. “There’s a lot of games in MLS where you play back and forth. You play against other teams and they give up some chances, you give up some, but at the end of the day, the quality Miami has... if you just look at the first goal. The pass that Messi makes and then the second goal with the ball that he hits from where he hits it from. I think you all would agree that you don’t see that regularly in MLS and you do when you play against them. They can punish you and that’s what they did.”
Both of Kansas City’s goals were scored by Erik Thommy in the sixth minute and the 58th. The first came as a result of a mistake by Inter Miami right back Marcelo Wiegandt, who lost the ball in the midfield.
In addition to the Fabulous Four, the rest of the Inter Miami starting lineup included: Drake Callender, Tomas Aviles, Gomez, Nico Freire, Julian Gressel, David Ruiz and Weigandt.
On the bench: CJ Dos Santos, Ryan Sailor, Noah Allen, Franco Negri, Benjamin Cremaschi, Lawson Sunderland, Yannick Bright, Leo Afonso and Shanyder Borgelin. Cremaschi, the Key Biscayne teenager who had not played this season after a hernia operation, made his season debut, coming in for Gressel in the 67th minute.
Leo Campana, Robert Taylor and Sergiy Kryvtsov missed the game with injuries.
