Fort Lauderdale.- On a gray night, the Inter Miami He won this Thursday 2-0 to Cavalier Jamaican in the first leg of the round of 16 Concacaf Champions Cupa party that Lionel Messi He saw from the stands.
The Argentine Tadeo Allende opened the score in Fort Lauderdale (outskirts of Miami) in the 61st minute and the Uruguayan Luis Suarez expanded the advantage in 83.
The American team left a bad image in the absence of Messi that, due to physical problems, followed the game from one of the Palcos del Chase Stadium with his family.
The Argentine star suffered with the rest of the public in a first half in which the Cavalier gave several important scares to the pupils of Javier Mascherano thanks to the speed of his attackers.
The champion of the Caribbean Cup first sent a ball to the post, in a center of Jalmaro Calvin that bounced in David Martínez, and just before the break he beat the local arch with a shot of Shaquille Stein after a foul served from the right.
The referee interrupted the visiting celebrations when reviewing the play in the VAR. The analysis lasted long minutes, that a restless Messi lived raised from his seat, but finally the goal was canceled offside.
“We play with fire and when you play with fire it is very possible that you break,” Mascherano summed up at the press conference. “It is a game in which we were lucky. The three or four counterattacks they had could not finish them in the best way.”
Inter, who did not shoot at the door in the first part, improved its benefits after the break.
Allende gave peace of mind to the stands with the first goal, in which he took advantage of several rebounds in the area after a corner, and the ‘gun’ Suarez enlarged the loot for the return in a counterattack in which he had space to accommodate the ball and send a left -hander adjusted to the post.
“As the game was given, it ended up being a very good result, but it is a warning that the parties are eleven against eleven and nobody gives you anything,” said Mascherano.
Messi goes “day by day”
The advantage achieved on Thursday could be enough for Messi not to travel to Kingston for the second leg of March 13. The winner will collide in the rooms against the winner of the American series between Columbus Crew and Los Angeles FC, which has a 3-0 advantage for the return.
Inter says that Messi does not suffer from any injury and only has “overload” due to the intensity of the calendar at this start of the year.
“I guided myself for what doctors tell me and they told me that he has no injury or scar,” Mascherano insisted. “It has a fatigue of having played three games in six days, of the changes of weather and many situations. And how we want to take care of it and that does not worsen fatigue, we gave it rest knowing the risks we ran.”
Mascherano did not want to advance a date of Messi, which will be evaluated “day by day.”
In addition to the Cup of Champions and the North American League (MLS), ‘La Pulga’ also has two close commitments to Argentina in the World Cup qualifiers against Uruguay (March 21) and Brazil (25).
