Seattle Sounders coach Brian Schmetzer discusses his team's strategies for limiting Lionel Messi's impact, highlighting the challenges of facing the Inter Miami star, and assessing the upcoming MLS Cup Final between Inter Miami and the Vancouver Whitecaps.
Seattle Sounders head coach Brian Schmetzer joined Unfiltered Soccer to explain how his team attempted to limit Lionel Messi 's impact ahead of Inter Miami 's MLS Cup Final matchup against the Vancouver Whitecaps.
champion. Both teams enter the game in excellent form, but recently, Miami has found an even higher level of dominance winning their last 3 playoff games by scorelines of 4-0, 4-0 and 5-1. Central to their success has been the continued brilliance of Argentinian superstarwinner has poured in an MLS single-postseason record 13 goal contributions over the course of Miami’s 5 playoff games. Schmetzer’s Sounders are the other team to have faced Inter Miami in a cup final this season, defeating them rather convincingly in August’sFinal, 3-0. With that success in his back pocket, Schmetzer elaborated on just how much goes into trying to keep Messi in check.“Whenever Messi got the ball, you had to double-team him. Our tactics were one guy has to slow him down, and then we need a second guy coming at all times.”“His vision is extraordinary. I mean, he sees the passes that no other players can. And so, we didn't want him to face the goal. We want him to go sideways this way, backwards if whenever possible, but you let Messi face forward, ball at his feet, dribbling at you. I mean, you're in, you're in for a long night.”regular season match. This time, however, Messi successfully navigated Seattle’s plan, registering a goal and an assist in a 3-1 Herons win.In addition to that success against Schmetzer, Sørensen and the Whitecaps experienced some noteworthy success against Miami as well beating them in both legs of their 2025semifinal, 2-0 and then 3-1. It will be a tall order to replicate that feat again in MLS Cup; one that Schmetzer thinks may just be a bridge too far. “I will give the edge to Miami,” said Schmetzer. “Just because they are at home. In MLS, there is a little bit of advantage playing at home.”A new state bill is set to be introduced in Olympia and aims to collect more than $2 billion a year from the likes of Amazon and Microsoft.A group of teens faced a judge Monday after allegedly shooting at officers and narrowly missing an innocent bystander during a high-speed chase with police.State lawmakers are heading into the 2026 budget season with an estimated shortfall of $390 million.A 19-year-old teenager was mauled to death at a zoo in front of zoo-goers, after climbing a 20-foot fence to get into the lion enclosure.Gerson de Melo Machado,It's the most wonderful time of the year for skiers and snowboarders. But numerous ski resorts have either postponed or not announced opening dates due to a lac
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