Los Angeles FC sent Lionel Messi and Inter Miami spinning to their first defeat of the season on Wednesday, scoring an upset 1-0 victory in their CONCACAF Champions Cup quarter-final first-leg clash.<\/p>\n
A 57th-minute strike from Los Angeles-born El Salvador international Nathan Ordaz handed LAFC a precious advantage heading into next Wednesday’s return leg in Florida.<\/p>\n
“I think we saw a complete performance,” said LAFC coach Steve Cherundolo, whose only complaint was that his team had not managed to win by a more convincing margin.<\/p>\n
“If we’re honest with ourselves we need to be a little sharper in front of goal. If we get the same types of chances next week in Miami we need to be a little more ruthless.”<\/p>\n
Miami coach Javier Mascherano had few complaints about his team’s defeat, according to AFP.<\/p>\n
“Obviously we didn’t have the best night tonight but it’s only the first leg,” Mascherano said.<\/p>\n
“We have another game next week. We can do what we need to reach the semi-finals.”<\/p>\n
Unbeaten in nine games across all competitions since the start of the season, Messi and Miami arrived in Los Angeles as the form team of Major League Soccer.<\/p>\n
But after a cagey first half that saw neither side manage to get on top, Los Angeles raised their intensity and began causing problems for the visitors.<\/p>\n
LAFC fullback Ryan Hollingshead squandered a golden chance in the 54th minute, blasting well wide after bursting into the penalty area on the overlap.<\/p>\n
They made the breakthrough three minutes later with the 21-year-old homegrown striker Ordaz spinning away from former Barcelona and Spain international Sergio Busquets and thumping a low shot into the bottom corner past Miami keeper Oscar Ustari.<\/p>\n
Argentine superstar Messi, making his first start since returning as a substitute last weekend following a two-week injury layoff, struggled to gain a foothold in the contest.<\/p>\n
Instead it was Los Angeles who looked likeliest to score in front of a raucous home crowd of 22,207 fans at the BMO Stadium that included NBA superstar Stephen Curry, Miami team owner David Beckham and Argentina national team manager Lionel Scaloni.<\/p>\n
US international Aaron Long headed just over from a free-kick in the 63rd minute, and moments later only a desperate goal-line block from Miami defender Maxi Falcon denied LAFC midfielder Timothy Tillman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Los Angeles FC sent Lionel Messi and Inter Miami spinning to their first defeat of the season on Wednesday, scoring an upset 1-0 victory in their CONCACAF Champions Cup quarter-final first-leg clash. A 57th-minute strike from Los Angeles-born El Salvador international Nathan Ordaz handed LAFC a precious advantage heading into next Wednesday’s return leg in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45717,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45721,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45720\/revisions\/45721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}