There will be no MLS Cup for Lionel Messi and Inter Miami this year. Atlanta United saw to that with a massive upset, sending the game’s most decorated player and biggest-spending team home earlier than anyone imagined.
Jamal Thiaré scored twice, Bartosz Slisz’s header in the 76th minute was the winner, and Atlanta United stunned Inter Miami 3-2 on Saturday night to win their best-of-three first round MLS Cup playoff series in three games.
Two free kicks by Messi in the final minutes hit the wall of Atlanta defenders, and time eventually ran out. Messi’s header - yes, header - in the 65th minute tied the match at 2-2, but the hosts never reclaimed the lead and Brad Guzan stopped almost everything that came his way in the Atlanta net to seal the upset.
It was the fifth win-or-else victory for Atlanta United this season - starting with two must-win matches to keep hope alive at the end of the regular season against the New York Red Bulls and Orlando City, then a wild-card match at Montreal, Game 2 of this series at home and then Saturday’s stunner.
And the East is suddenly wide open.
Ninth-seeded Atlanta United will play No. 4 Orlando City in the Eastern Conference semifinal, while sixth-seeded New York City FC will face the seventh-seeded New York Red Bulls in the other East semifinal.
No. 2 Columbus was already gone. No. 3 Cincinnati was ousted Saturday. And then came the biggest surprise of all - No. 1 Inter Miami’s season is over.
The team with the best record won the MLS Cup four times in the league’s first seven seasons. In the 22 seasons since, the top overall seed has gone on to win the title only four more times.
And on paper, there may never have been a bigger upset than this one - a No. 9 seed vs. A No. 1 seed, and not just that, a No. 1 seed with Messi in the lineup. Messi’s $20,446,667 in total compensation from Inter Miami this season was about $5 million more than the entire Atlanta payroll, and Inter Miami spent a record $41.7 million on payroll this season.
It got Inter Miami the Supporters’ Shield, the best regular-season record in MLS history and an invitation to next year’s Club World Cup, which came as no surprise. But it didn’t even get the club into Round 2 of the playoffs, which will be remembered as a massive flop.
And Atlanta fully believed it was going to pull this off.
For whatever reason, Atlanta was a matchup nightmare for Inter Miami this season. It beat Inter Miami three times, all of them with Messi in the lineup; every other MLS team combined to get three wins over Inter Miami.
A five-minute, three-goal barrage in the first half set the tone. Inter Miami opened the scoring and Atlanta United punched right back - twice.
Thiaré was denied by the goalpost 14 minutes into the contest, when his deflection of a flick into the box narrowly missed opening the scoring. And Inter Miami grabbed a 1-0 lead about two minutes later - Messi was stopped by a diving Guzan, but Diego Gómez was there to lift the rebound into the net from a tight angle near the right post.The lead didn’t last long. Thiaré saw to that.
He took a pass and was completely unmarked, firing into the upper right corner to beat Inter Miami goalkeeper Drake Callender - who had no chance - to tie the match in the 19th minute. And not even two minutes later, Alexey Miranchuk tapped a pass to Thiaré who went over Callender for a 2-1 Atlanta lead.
Just like that, the best team in MLS regular-season history - and the best player in the sport’s history - was in big, big trouble. Inter Miami thought it tied the match in the 25th minute, only for Gómez to be called offside. And the hosts argued wildly for a penalty kick later in the half, arguing that there was a handball in the box (replay suggested they had a case), but they still went into the half down 2-1.
Messi tied it, one last hurrah on the season. But it ended about a half-hour later, leaving the Inter Miami side in stunned disbelief.
