Messi's Repeat Run Starts With the One Team He Couldn't Beat

The bracket is locked, and the defending champions got the draw nobody wanted.

Inter Miami open their MLS Cup defense on Saturday, November 21 at Nu Stadium (6 p.m. ET, Apple TV) against the Columbus Crew — No. 2 seed against No. 7, except the No. 7 seed is the hottest team in the league and the only side Miami played twice this season without beating. Columbus drew 2-2 in Miami on August 1, then beat Miami 2-1 in Columbus on September 27. The repeat bid starts against the one opponent with a receipt.

Miami has the player, though. Messi closed the regular season with 26 goals and 17 assists and a second straight Golden Boot, a back-to-back no player in league history had managed before him. Around him sit Luis Suárez, Rodrigo De Paul and Casemiro, and the prize is a piece of history the league has not seen in over a decade: no club has won consecutive MLS Cups since the LA Galaxy in 2011-12.

So why does this feel live? Because of how Miami finished. On Decision Day at Nu Stadium, Miami led Charlotte 3-0 at half-time — Ian Fray at 14 minutes, Suárez at 33, De Paul at 42, the first two built off Messi corners — and still did not win. Liel Abada scored twice in five minutes after the break and Rodolfo Aloko leveled it at 90 minutes for 3-3. Miami held the No. 2 seed, but they walked off their own pitch having given away a three-goal lead at home for the second time this season. The last one, against Orlando in May, they lost.

Columbus walked into the playoffs the opposite way. On September 1 the Crew were last in the Eastern Conference. They closed 9-2-0, and on Decision Day at Chicago they trailed three separate times before Brais Méndez, on as a substitute, scored at 90+3' to win it 4-3. Gonzalo Tapia scored twice. The win jumped Columbus from ninth to seventh, straight past the Wild Card round they were ninety minutes from playing in, and Méndez did it in his first appearance since the U.S. Open Cup final, back from a thigh injury at the exact moment his team needed one more goal.

That is the series. Miami's ceiling against Columbus's timing. The Crew's summer signings changed them — Méndez and Santiago Rodríguez have combined for nine goals and twelve assists since arriving — and their two results against Miami were not smash-and-grabs. In August, Méndez scored late off a free kick in his Crew debut to take a point in Miami. In September, Jamal Thiare won it in stoppage time after Messi had tied it with a free kick of his own. Columbus knows it can score late on this team because it has done it twice.

The format punishes a slow start. Round One is best-of-three, home-away-home: Game 1 in Miami on November 21, Game 2 at Columbus on Friday, November 27 (8 p.m. ET), and a deciding Game 3 back at Nu Stadium on December 2 if it gets there. Ties go straight to penalties. If Miami drops Game 1 at home, the defense of its title runs through a building where it already lost this season, with no margin left. Follow the series in the Game Center.

The rest of the bracket waits on Thursday. The Wild Cards come first on November 19 — Orlando City host FC Cincinnati (7:30 p.m. ET) for the right to face Nashville, and Real Salt Lake go to Seattle (10 p.m. ET) for a shot at Vancouver. Nashville is the story of the regular season: a league-record 77 points, the Supporters' Shield, and only 25 goals conceded. Vancouver took the West's top seed with 64 points. Salt Lake's place in that picture belongs to a rookie — Sergi Solans scored at 10 minutes as RSL beat the LA Galaxy 2-1 on Decision Day to take the West's final spot, and his 15th goal of the season left him two short of the all-time MLS rookie record of 17, held by Cyle Larin since 2015, and two short of Salt Lake's single-season club record. Close enough to hurt. His season now runs through one night in Seattle.

None of that touches Saturday. Saturday is Messi, at home, in the first playoff match Nu Stadium has ever hosted, against the team that spent two months climbing out of last place and never once looked scared of him. The champions are favorites. The bracket says so, the Golden Boot says so. Columbus's last eleven games say something else, and Game 1 is where those two stories meet.