The ghost haunts Chase Stadium tonight, but Lionel Messi won't be wearing pink and black. He's away with Argentina, leaving Inter Miami to face a team that should represent nothing more than a tune-up heading into the playoffs—yet Atlanta United carries with them the weight of memory, the sting of last October when they walked into Fort Lauderdale and dismantled the Messi dream in the first round of the MLS Cup.
Almost exactly one year ago to the day, Atlanta ended Inter Miami's season. Now they arrive as the walking wounded, limping through a catastrophic campaign with five wins in thirty-two matches, twenty-six points behind the playoff line, a team that exists somewhere between autopsy and eulogy. They've lost their last three, managed just a single goal in those defeats, and are playing out the string while Inter Miami—sitting third in the East with 59 points and two games remaining—are fine-tuning their machinery for the postseason run they believe is their birthright.
But here's what gnaws at you when you watch Javier Mascherano pace the technical area: football has a nasty habit of remembering. The sport keeps receipts. And while Atlanta United have been dreadful this season, while they've averaged barely over a goal per match and shipped 58 in return, they remain the team that proved Inter Miami mortal when it mattered most. That memory doesn't just live in the record books. It lives in the bodies of the players, in the collective consciousness of a franchise that spent ungodly sums to build a dynasty and instead got embarrassed on their home field when the stakes were highest.
Mascherano's appointment always carried the scent of desperation masked as ambition. No managerial experience beyond Argentina's youth sides, installed because he shared a dressing room with Messi, because the board believed the invisible threads of camaraderie could translate to tactical mastery. The early returns looked promising—nine matches before the first defeat, a 4-3 thriller against FC Dallas that felt more entertaining than alarming. But then came the losses, including that 3-0 humiliation at the hands of Orlando City in mid-May that forced everyone to recalibrate expectations.
Since then, something has clicked. Four losses in eighteen matches, 72 goals scored in league play—top of the entire league—and an attack that has found its rhythm even as they continue to leak goals at the back. They've conceded 53 in the league, and while that defensive fragility should concern them heading into playoff football, the philosophy seems clear: we'll outscore our problems. It's worked often enough. Tadeo Allende has emerged as a genuine threat, grabbing two in last weekend's 4-1 dismantling of New England. Jordi Alba, ancient by football standards, still provides those dangerous runs from deep. Luis Suárez, impossibly, continues to find the net.
But without Messi—24 goals, 14 assists, the numbers that don't capture what he actually does to opposing defensive structures—Inter Miami must prove they're more than a collection of aging stars orbiting a singular genius. The Philadelphia Union sit seven points clear at the top of the East. Miami have two matches to make up ground, and this should be the easiest of the two, the gimme, the confidence-builder before the final test at Nashville.
Atlanta United, meanwhile, are just trying to escape the season with dignity intact. Emmanuel Latte Lath has seven goals, which tells you everything about an attack that has produced 37 all season. They've managed just one shot on target in recent matches, played for 1-0 and gotten exactly that against Los Angeles FC. They'll sit deep, pack the box, dare Miami to break them down without their talisman.
The betting markets expect carnage. Miami by two goals or more seems reasonable, conservative even. But football doesn't care about logic when memory and revenge come calling. Atlanta United arrives with nothing to lose and everything to spoil. They won't win—they haven't won often enough this season to believe they can—but they can make Miami uncomfortable, force them to play tight, maybe even plant a seed of doubt heading into the playoffs.
The real story isn't whether Inter Miami wins tonight. It's whether they win with the ruthless efficiency of a team that learned from last October's disaster, or whether they win ugly, grinding out a result against inferior opposition, revealing cracks in the foundation that better teams will exploit when the tournament begins. Because Atlanta United already proved that star power doesn't guarantee anything when the calendar flips and the real season starts. They proved it can all come crashing down in your own stadium, in front of your own supporters, despite having the greatest player who ever lived on the field.
Miami needs this demolition job. They need to exorcise last year's ghosts before they can think about the future. Anything less than dominance should terrify them.