Messi miracle continues as Inter Miami reaches U.S. Open Cup title game with epic comeback | Opinion

Inter Miami trailed 2-0 late in the match and you had to think, “It was time. This was due. Overdue.” A reality check for Miami fans and for American soccer, both understandably bathing in the month-long euphoria of Lionel Messi actually playing here.

Miami won’t win each match he plays and Messi will not have a starring role in every one. Right?

There will be times the other team is better all-round. And occasions when Messi, at 36, gives a mortal (for him) performance and might be forgiven for that. Right?

Yes. That all seemed certain at 2-nil down. And eventually it will happen. But not yet.

We haven’t finished yet with Messi magic.

We haven’t finished yet with this man’s astonishing, immediate impact on what had been a miserably bad Inter Miami team.

Miami — the worst team in Major League Soccer when he got here — is now 8-0 with 10 goals scored by him since his arrival.

Miami’s epic rally from two goals down Wednesday night ended in a 3-3 draw through regulation and extra time and then a 5-4 triumph in penalty kicks at Cincinnati to lift Miami into next month’s U.S. Open Cup championship game.

Here is how Miami, down 2-nil, won:

A close-range header by Leonardo Campana in the 68th minute happened from a curling set-piece delivery from (of course) Messi.

Then it was 2-2 in the 97th minute, seconds from the final whistle, when Messi’s curling pass ended with Campana again.

Miami led 3-2 in extra time on Josef Martinez’s goal — only to see Cincy tie it later in extra time.

In penalty kicks, after Drake Callender’s fifth-round block, Miami’s Benjamin Cremaschi — native Miamian — with calm beyond his 18 years, netted the winning penalty kick, soon swarmed by teammates.

“I’m living a dream,” he said afterward. “Sometimes I sit down and really think of the position I’m in, on the field with Messi, the best player in the world, and it’s unbelievable.”

Cincinnati — with the best record in the MLS regular season that now resumes — scored first and fast in the 18th minute on a Luciano Acosta shot and got the critical second in the 53rd minute via a Brandon Vazquez finish “as cool as a greyhound’s nose,” as soccer poet Ray Hudson put it on CBS Sports’ Golazo Network telecast.

But Messi and Miami were just getting started.

Messi and Miami’s eight straight wins have concluded the last seven in a row vs. MLS competition.

Just days earlier Miami had won the Leagues Cup championship for the club’s first-ever trophy, a tournament just 3 years old.

The U.S. Open Cup, by contrast, is America’s longest-running continuous soccer competition, predating even the establishment of the U.S. Soccer Federation.

In 1914 this all-comers, single-elimination tournament began. The first winning team was called Brooklyn Field Club. Rookies in baseball that year included one named Babe Ruth. It was the year World War I was breaking out.

Now, Miami will play Sept. 27 in an all-MLS final vs. the winner of the other semifinal match between Houston Dynamo and Real Salt Lake.

Real Salt Lake would host the final. BUt if Houston wins the final would be hosted by Inter Miami — and perhaps at mammoth Hard Rock Stadium, not the Herons’ usual cozy DRV PNK Stadium in Fort Lauderdale.

Before that, this Saturday, Miami’s MLS regular season resumes with a game at New York Red Bulls.

Miami has 12 games left in the regular season to climb from last place to a playoff spot. Messi inherits a tough ask.

It seemed impossible, once.

Then came that Leagues Cup trophy.

Then came Wednesday night’s miracle and a U.S. Open Cup title match.

Then came eight straight wins, straight outta some insane script nobody would believe.

Then came Messi.