Inter Miami, hardened by past failure and a happy accident, hits peak for MLS Cup – The Athletic

Inter Miami has learned its lesson.

Miami heads into next Saturday’s MLS Cup final against the Vancouver Whitecaps finally looking like the team many expected to see with Lionel Messi in its ranks, A 5-1 crushing of New York City FC in Saturday’s Eastern Conference final, on the back of a 4-0 win at FC Cincinnati, makes Miami the favorite to lift the Philip F. Anschutz Trophy on its home ground next week. Miami has scored three or more goals in four of its five playoff matches thus far and set a new MLS record for goals across a regular season and postseason combined (98). In bracing to welcome the Whitecaps to South Florida, Inter Miami is hitting its peak.

No matter the club’s payroll, though, it hasn’t come easy. Building momentum into the postseason is the key factor in any competition decided by playoffs, but it’s a lesson Miami had to learn the hard way. Last season, under Gerardo Martino, Miami utterly dominated the regular season, winning the Supporters’ Shield with a record 74 points. But that top-seed status counted for nothing when the club crashed out of the playoffs in the first round, losing its best-of-three series to Atlanta United – despite a 34-point gap in the standings — and spending the next month watching teams it had beaten in the regular season competing for the title.

“This format seems a little unfair to me,” Jordi Alba said after the defeat to Atlanta. It was Miami and Messi’s ‘Welcome to America’ moment, and it evidently hurt so much that it was still on the Argentine maestro’s mind when he was interviewed by Fabrizio Romano last month.

“We have the experience from last year, when we finished first in the regular season, and then in the first (round), we got knocked out,” he said. “I think the playoffs are a separate competition, where games are different, the teams are much more careful and attentive to everything, to every detail, as any given situation you can be knocked out. But obviously we are prepared to compete, to fight and to try to win it.”

Lionel Messi and Inter Miami will play in MLS Cup (Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)

Miami’s regular season was nowhere near as impressive in 2025. After a strong start, Javier Mascherano’s side was a mess in April and May – it lost 4-3 at home to Dallas, was thrashed 4-1 at Minnesota United and was outclassed 3-0 at home to Florida rival Orlando City. In the midst of those MLS misadventures came losses in both legs of the Concacaf Champions Cup semifinals against the Whitecaps, with the club utterly outdone in a 3-1 second-leg home defeat to the Canadian side.

Those results and performances – in particular the shambolic defending — raised fears about what June might bring in the Club World Cup which Miami had been questionably awarded a spot on the basis of their Supporters Shield title.

If Miami couldn’t keep Minnesota, Dallas and Orlando at bay, what could transpire against Portuguese giants Porto and Brazilian powerhouse Palmeiras?

But Miami raised its game, beating Porto 2-1 on a signature Messi free kick – the first victory by an MLS team over European opposition in a competitive game – and drawing 2-2 with Palmeiras to make it into the last 16 of the FIFA tournament. The reality check was provided by European champions Paris Saint-Germain, which won 4-0, but even that defeat was not quite the humiliation that many predicted.

Mascherano, who critics suggested had been hired purely because of a friendship with Messi rather than due to his coaching ability, had found a way to set-up the team to protect his fragile defense, and when Miami returned to MLS action in July, it did so with three straight wins.

There were still stumbles to come in the regular season — another heavy, 4-1 loss in Orlando, a 3-0 loss in Charlotte and then an alarming 5-3 defeat at home to Chicago on September 30. But crucially Miami won its last three regular season games (and six of its last eight) and secured the third seed in the East. Prior to its playoff scoring binge, Miami scored at least three goals in seven of its last eight regular season games. Messi spearheaded that effort, winning the Golden Boot with 29 goals in 28 games, though all seemed to depend on the 38-year-old keeping fit for the postseason.

A defeat in Game 2 of the best-of-three first-round series against Nashville put the pressure on Miami again and raised the prospect of a repeat early exit. But the MLS Disciplinary Committee’s decision to take retrospective action and suspend Luis Suárez from the deciding game for kicking out at Andy Najar turned out to be a rather transformative moment and happy accident.

Far from weakening Miami, Suárez’s absence forced Mascherano to start 19-year-old Mateo Silvetti and Tadeo Allende in attack with Messi dropping deeper into a false nine. With 22-year-old Baltasar Rodriguez buzzing around in midfield, Miami suddenly had something that had been sorely missing from the side with Suárez as the target man – pace and legs.

Tadeo Allende and Mateo Silvetti have given Inter Miami’s attack a new dimension in the playoffs (Rich Storry / Getty Images)

Without Suárez, Miami beat Nashville 4-0 with a brace each from Allende and Messi, as the fears of another first-round exit were banished emphatically. Speaking after Saturday’s win over NYCFC, Mascherano made it clear that the memories of the Atlanta debacle had been at the forefront going into that game.

“Personally, the biggest thing for me in this playoff run was before the third game against Nashville — maybe that’s when the memory of last season was felt most. We arrived at the third game with similar results, playing at home, and I think what happened last season was a big learning experience. I had nothing to do with it, but the experienced players who lived through it passed on what they learned to the rest,” he said.

In Cincinnati, Mascherano resisted the temptation to recall Suárez to the starting lineup. and his decision was rewarded with a devastating display. Messi opened the scoring, and Silvetti added the second before Allende, now brimming with confidence, added two more.

The Uruguayan veteran was among the substitutes again against NYCFC, and again Miami sparkled without him, with Allende scoring a hat trick and Silvetti scoring again as well.

Mascherano had praised Suarez’s response to being left out in Ohio, and in the aftermath of the conference final celebrations he was careful not to frame his team’s success as being the result of the three games without the Uruguayan.

“I wouldn’t pick just the last three games, I’d say almost the last two months — except for the setback against Chicago, the last two months have been amazing. But the big credit goes to the team, for being convinced about where we’re going, for becoming stronger as a group. We’ve reached the end of the season with a team that has a brotherhood. Everyone pulls together, it doesn’t matter who starts, we’re truly a group, and the power of a group is immeasurable. It can overcome a lot,” he said.

There was a word Mascherano used several times during Saturday’s post-game press conference — conviction. The former Liverpool and Barcelona standout used it to describe the way his team has found self-belief and confidence in its own ability and in the system he is asking them to play.

And, like his players, he knows that like everything else in the playoffs, it is all about timing.

“We’ve found this conviction at the right time — this tournament is really two: regular season and playoffs,” he said. “It’s good that this conviction came now. Today will be remembered as a conference championship for the club, which isn’t a minor thing, but the most important part is still to come.”