Lionel Messi scored two goals and assisted on another as Inter Miami beat New York City FC 4-0 to seal a berth in the MLS Cup playoffs for the second year running.<\/p>\n
Luis Suarez and Baltasar Rodriguez were the other goal scorers for Miami as the visitors snapped NYCFC\u2019s three-game winning streak at Citi Field, New York, on Wednesday.
\nThe win helped Miami move into third place, above NYCFC and Charlotte FC in the Eastern Conference with 55 points from 16 games.<\/p>\n
Messi\u2019s brace helped him move to the top spot on the MLS goal-scoring charts with 24 goals in 23 games, two ahead of LAFC\u2019s Denis Bouanga.<\/p>\n
The Argentinian star\u2019s first goal came in the 74th minute when he reached Sergio Busquets\u2019s exceptional through-ball and chipped the charging Matt Freese. His second came 12 minutes later, when he finished low on the dribble on an attack set up by Marcelo Weigandt\u2019s pass and Suarez\u2019s decoy run.<\/p>\n
Messi was a provider first, when Rodriguez put Miami in front in the 43rd minute by finishing off an attack that flowed straight up New York\u2019s middle.<\/p>\n
Busquets intercepted a pass in his own half and then quickly fed the ball to Messi, who turned his body towards the goal with one touch, then, with his second, fed Rodriguez\u2019s run in behind the NYCFC defence.<\/p>\n
After one touch forward, Rodriguez dispatched his second from just inside the penalty area, low past Freese and inside the right post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lionel Messi scored two goals and assisted on another as Inter Miami beat New York City FC 4-0 to seal a berth in the MLS Cup playoffs for the second year running. Luis Suarez and Baltasar Rodriguez were the other goal scorers for Miami as the visitors snapped NYCFC\u2019s three-game winning streak at Citi Field, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54827","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\/54827","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=54827"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54829,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54827\/revisions\/54829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}