The CONCACAF Champions Cup is far from the most glamorous soccer competition. But for Lionel Messi, in his first full year at Inter Miami, it's probably the most significant. And on Thursday night, it dealt Messi and friends their first real blows of 2024. After 46 minutes, it had them in a giant hole, down 2-0 in Nashville.
But Messi and Luis Suarez lifted Inter up and out of that hole, to a dramatic 2-2 draw in this Round of 16 first leg.
Messi did so with one devastating sweep of his left boot.
Suarez followed with a stoppage-time header, a second all-important away goal, which will send Inter back to South Florida as the clear favorite in next week's second leg.
The series will be decided on aggregate, over 180 minutes. But Nashville, an emerging Miami nemesis, needed only four minutes to put a scare into Major League Soccer's glamor club.
The hosts stunned Miami before the tournament's significance could even be explored, before Messi broke a sweat. They sliced through a new-look Inter midfield. Shaq Moore teed up Jacob Shaffelburg for an emphatic finish.
For most of the first half, they also stuffed Messi. And less than a minute into the second, Shaffelburg, a mulleted Canadian winger, stuffed Miami deeper into a hole.
He tip-toed inside on his right foot, and picked out the top corner.
So here Inter Miami was, in a yellow cauldron of noise, staring down defeat in the one competition where it can't afford one.
The Champions Cup isn't just a battle for regional supremacy. The 2024 edition offers one last ticket to the inaugural 32-team Club World Cup, which is coming to the United States next summer, and in which Inter Miami desperately wants a spot.
Its grandest global ambitions, in many ways, depend on that 2025 tournament, the only Club World Cup that will occur with Messi under contract. So the route to it has seemingly become Miami's 2024 priority. They will try to repeat as Leagues Cup champs. They know they must make the MLS playoffs. But those are distant goals. Their first real test is what head coach Tata Martino called "the great challenge that is the ConcaChampions."
"It seems to me that because of the prize, that is probably the most important tournament that we have to play in," Martino said prior to the season. "And it is also a different tournament from the league. The league is so long that it allows you to make the odd mistake. The short tournaments and head-to-head matches allow you few or almost no errors.”
But here they were, making errors, struggling to break down a resolute Nashville defense.
They needed rescuing. And Messi answered the urgent call.
At 2-1 down, Inter might have been fine heading back home for Leg 2. But Messi, Suarez and an army of subs nonetheless pushed for a second.
And they got it at the death, in the 95th minute. They'll enter next Wednesday's second leg with their heads firmly above ground, their eyes on the quarterfinals.