Lionel Messi scored his 21st and 22nd goals to move into the MLS lead and added his 12th assist, leading Inter Miami to a 3-2 victory over visiting D.C. United on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
Tadeo Allende scored the opener for Miami (15-6-7, 52 points), which completed consecutive victories in the league for the first time since winning three straight from July 5-12, Reuters reported.<\/p>\n
That was enough to lift the Herons into fifth in the Eastern Conference standings and keep them eight points back of East leader Philadelphia with three matches still in hand.<\/p>\n
Christian Benteke scored his eighth goal and assisted his third for D.C. (5-16-10, 25 points), which lost for the first time in five matches under incoming manager Rene Weiler.<\/p>\n
Substitute Jacob Murrell added a late consolation goal for D.C. after Messi’s second-half brace pushed Miami to a 3-1 lead.<\/p>\n
Messi moved above Nashville’s Sam Surridge in the MLS Golden Boot chase after Surridge began the night with 21 goals but failed to score in his side’s 3-2 loss at Orlando.<\/p>\n
And Messi might have had a hat trick on another night, given how often he threatened Luis Barraza’s goal in the second half.<\/p>\n
He forced Barraza into two saves only moments after Benteke leveled at 1-1 in the 53rd minute and then restored Miami’s lead in the 66th.<\/p>\n
With D.C. defending narrowly in its own box, Jordi Alba took a pass from Ian Fray, while Messi had cleverly drifted back into the play from an offside position.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lionel Messi scored his 21st and 22nd goals to move into the MLS lead and added his 12th assist, leading Inter Miami to a 3-2 victory over visiting D.C. United on Saturday night. Tadeo Allende scored the opener for Miami (15-6-7, 52 points), which completed consecutive victories in the league for the first time since …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54616","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\/54616","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=54616"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54618,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54616\/revisions\/54618"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}