Mess is heating up just in time for Inter Miami's Club World Cup campaign | OneFootball

The demise of Lionel Messi and Inter Miami has been grossly exaggerated.

Messi gave a second consecutive vintage performance on Saturday night, scoring two goals and assisting three more to lead Inter Miami to an emphatic 5-1 victory over the Columbus Crew on Saturday night in South Florida.

After nearly a month of worry about the wobbly form of Miami heading into the Club World Cup, Messi appears to have silenced those concerns almost single-handedly with his last two performances.

He now has an absurd eight goal involvements since Wednesday as the Herons followed a 4-2 midweek triumph over CF Montreal with an even stronger performance against a far better Crew side.

And now Messi, Miami and manager Javier Mascherano will be able to channel those results into more optimistic preparations for their Club World Cup campaign, which begins on June 14 against Al Ahly.

Miami follows that with games against Porto on June 19 and Palmeiras on June 23 to close Group A play.

Hard times are over?

Those back-to-back wins followed a stretch of only one victory in eight games across all competitions, including an embarrassing capitulation to the Vancouver Whitecaps across two legs of a lopsided Concacaf Champions Cup semifinal.

That slide, while Messi was more or less fully healthy, was unlike anything we'd previously seen in Messi's Miami tenure, or indeed at any time in his club career.

Much of the focus came upon Mascherano's potential shortcomings, and it's probably fair to suggest his inexperience hasn't helped the situation. But Messi also appeared off his game at times, cutting a figure of frustration even while also slumping himself in front of goal.

He went four consecutive Miami appearances without scoring, his longest such stretch since he went six straight without finding the net in a disjointed run of appearances between late August of 2023 and February of 2024.

Messi now has 10 league goals and six assists in 13 MLS appearances in 2025. He only needs six more appearances to match his total from 2024, in which he finished with 20 goals.