Messi Shines in Record Crowd as Inter Miami Defeats Toronto FC
The biggest crowd in Toronto FC history came for Lionel Messi. They went home talking about the referee and a furious head coach.
Inter Miami beat Toronto 4-2 on Saturday afternoon at BMO Field, a scoreline that only hints at the chaos that wrapped itself around the final home game before the World Cup break. Messi scored once, set up two more, and turned the stadium into his stage. On the opposite touchline, Robin Fraser ended the day in the tunnel, sent off after raging at two non-calls that he believes cut his team down.
“I feel really hard done,” he said, and the anger was still fresh.
Fraser fumes as key moments go against Toronto
The first flashpoint came early in the second half. Toronto defender Raheem Edwards went down heavily in the Miami half, clearly in distress. No whistle. No yellow card. Play surged the other way.
With Edwards still on the turf, Miami pounced and scored their second of the afternoon. To Fraser, it was a double blow: a missed foul and a player left on the ground keeping the visitors onside.
“Raheem was clearly fouled outside our box, a yellow-card foul at that, and (the referee) lets it go,” Fraser said. “And then the player who is now hurt, is the player who keeps them on-side for the second goal. And then Raheem has to come off five minutes later.”
The frustration only deepened in added time. Toronto forward Derrick Etienne Jr. went down in the Miami box, the home fans screaming for a penalty. Again, Victor Rivas waved play on. Moments later, Fraser saw red.
“The thing that’s really going to stick in my craw is those two calls,” he said. “It’s mind-blowing to me.”
Asked if Miami’s status as defending MLS Cup champion, with Messi and a star-studded roster, influenced the officiating, Fraser did not bite but did not back down either.
“The rules are the rules,” he said. “I don’t know if people are afraid to upset superstars by making calls against their team, but the rules are the rules.”
He still accepted that Toronto contributed to their own downfall, pointing to turnovers that Miami punished ruthlessly.
Messi delivers, crowd divided between awe and anger
Messi started and, from the first touch, held the record crowd in the palm of his hand. The temporary World Cup stands were finally in use, pushing BMO Field to a record 44,828 fans. Many wore red. Many wore pink. Almost all rose whenever No. 10 received the ball.
He did what they came to see. In the 56th minute, with Toronto still very much in the game, Messi slipped a precise pass into the box for Luis Suarez. The Uruguayan drilled a left-footed finish into the corner while Edwards lay flat behind the play, clutching himself in apparent agony. The goal stood. The jeers rained down on Rivas.
The pressure from Miami built, and once the dam cracked, it burst. Sergio Reguilon made it 3-0 in the 73rd minute, finishing a move that again involved Messi. Two minutes later, the Argentine added his own name to the scoresheet, steering a left-footed shot from the centre of the box past Luka Gavran for his ninth goal of the MLS season, this time from a Rodrigo De Paul assist.
Gavran later denied Messi a second with a sharp late save, one of several moments that stopped the scoreline from turning ugly.
Not everything about Messi’s afternoon was joyous. Several fans stormed the field in separate incidents, trying to reach the Inter Miami star. Security moved quickly to subdue them, but the scenes underlined the mania that follows him into every stadium.
Toronto start strong, then unravel
For all the Messi noise, Toronto actually opened well. Fraser’s patched-up side — still missing Djordje Mihailovic, Josh Sargent, Richie Laryea and Matheus Pereira among others — controlled the early rhythm, moved the ball with confidence and pressed Miami into mistakes.
Then came the first punch against the run of play.
In the 44th minute, De Paul stood over a free kick outside the box. His initial effort thudded into the wall, but the rebound fell kindly. From the right half-space, he lashed a high right-footed shot beyond Gavran to make it 1-0.
Toronto almost responded immediately. Daniel Salloi found space in a dangerous area and drove a shot toward the corner, only for Dayne St Clair to fling himself across goal and claw it away. The Miami goalkeeper, fighting for a place in Canada’s World Cup squad, produced one of the saves of the match to preserve the lead.
Fraser later praised his team’s early work.
“The first half was fantastic,” he said. “We probably had four or five transition moments that could have been really dangerous and I felt like our decisions there let us down a bit.”
Those missed chances loomed larger once Suarez doubled Miami’s advantage and the contentious Edwards incident ignited the stadium.
Aristizabal’s late surge offers a glimpse of fight
Down 4-0 and with the home crowd simmering, Toronto could have folded. They did the opposite.
Substitute Emilio Aristizabal, introduced in the 65th minute, injected life into a game that looked dead. He struck twice late on, first with a crisp right-footed finish, then with a well-timed header that finally beat St Clair. Each goal dragged the noise back into the building, a reminder that even against the league’s glamour side, TFC still had teeth.
Zane Monlouis had earlier gone close with a header that St Clair tipped away, another moment that hinted at what might have been on a different afternoon.
Miami still finished with the numbers that matter: a 6-2-4 record, 60 per cent possession, six shots on target to Toronto’s five, and three points on the flight home. Toronto slipped to 3-4-5, their winless run in MLS home matches stretching to six.
The Reds now leave BMO Field behind after a marathon stretch of 10 straight home games. They will not return until Aug. 15, when the New England Revolution visit after the World Cup break.
By then, injuries may have eased, tempers may have cooled, and the officiating storm may have blown over. What will linger is the memory of a record crowd, a furious coach, and Messi walking off the pitch having once again bent a night — and a league — to his will.
