HARRISON, N.J. – The sun was beginning to set as thousands clad in pink jerseys settled into their seats, hoping to see a show. The wait was not particularly long – with Lionel Messi temporarily a member of a captive audience, 17-year-old midfielder Adri Mehmeti made World Cup winner Rodrigo de Paul march to the beat of his drum. Red Bull New York were up on reigning MLS Cup champions Inter Miami seconds later thanks to a Casemiro own goal, the lead fully deserved.
Adri Mehmeti starts it with some filthy tekkers 😱Julian Hall opens the scoring against @InterMiamiCF! pic.twitter.com/sufccNHZub A moment of brilliance from a rising local star is now a weekly occurrence in MLS, especially from those who took part in the U.S. men's national team's generational shift-themed friendlies this fall. It was perhaps one of few guarantees on Saturday, the main one being Messi's presence. He was the reason, after all, that Sports Illustrated Stadium was actually full, this time with spectators who jumped out of concession lines in the 56th minute to see Messi enter the pitch.
He's the person whose name is chanted more often than any of the home team's players by a very healthy margin, no matter the MLS stadium. It's the kind of request Inter Miami always feel obliged to grant because of his inexplicable excellence, even if he was in Oviedo, Spain, two days earlier to accept the Princess of Asturias award for sport. The appetite for Messi is insatiable in that way, to the point that the vast majority of people in the building believed he would flip the game on its head in a single moment.
Miami fell flat in a 2-0 defeat to the Red Bulls, who precariously sit in the final playoff position with three games to go. The 16 points and six places that separate them in the Eastern Conference indicated that Miami would at least assert themselves at times on Saturday, but they failed to make a dent in more ways than one. Mehmeti's ability to outperform De Paul for the game's opening goal set the tone for the evening in a lot of ways, losing the game as soon as they lost the midfield battle.
It was not that they lacked the opportunity to impose themselves – they had 65.9% possession, took 906 touches and completed 86.3% of their 714 passes. That possession never translated to an actual ability to dominate the game, their performance disjointed and ineffective in the end. "Our build-up play from the back was slow, and we lost possession in areas where we simply cannot afford to lose the ball," Miami head coach Cristian "Kily" Gonzalez said post-match.
"Because of these turnovers — whether due to poor passing, bad touches, or other errors — we ended up being caught too spread out as a team. I don't want to take any credit away from our opponent, but I believe the main issue was our own failure to maintain the style of play that defines us — specifically, avoiding so many turnovers in the midfield. We were also caught out by passes played behind our lines and we weren't compact enough.
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