SEO Title: Messi delivers a first Campeones Cup for Inter Miami and Kily González
SEO Description: Lionel Messi scored and assisted as Inter Miami beat Cruz Azul 2-0 to win their first Campeones Cup, giving new coach Cristian “Kily” González a winning debut.
In Miami, where the club’s short history has already gathered an unusually international cast, Cristian “Kily” González began his Inter Miami tenure with the kind of evening few coaches could script. Lionel Messi scored once, created another goal and helped the Florida side overcome Cruz Azul 2-0 to claim the Campeones Cup for the first time.
Messi keeps his promise on González’s first night
González said Messi had told him he would help make him a champion in his first match in charge. The Argentine captain followed through with a goal and an assist, delivering a trophy on a night that carried particular weight for a team that had gone three matches without a victory.
“Leo told me he would make me a champion, and he did it,” González said after the final. “I cannot find the words for what I am feeling: joy, happiness, so many emotions at once.”
The win gives Inter Miami a needed lift after disappointments in both the Concacaf Champions Cup and the Leagues Cup, competitions in which the club’s ambitions had ended early. Their domestic campaign remains alive, with Miami second in the MLS Eastern Conference, though they sit nine points behind the leaders.
For González, the final against Cruz Azul also showed that a squad accustomed to collecting honours still wanted another night with silverware. He praised the appetite of players who have already won extensively yet approached the match with the determination to add another trophy to the club’s collection.
Messi, inevitably, stood at the centre of that appetite. González called him the world’s best player and argued that the Ballon d’Or should belong to him.
“There is nobody else like him,” the coach said. “I have no doubt that he deserves the Ballon d’Or. At his age, after the World Cup he had, and for what he means to people—not only through football but through his values—it would be fair for him to win it.”
A delayed debut, then a new piece of history
Inter Miami appointed González in late August to succeed Guillermo Hoyos, but work-permit difficulties kept the former Argentine midfielder from taking his place on the touchline until Wednesday. His previous managerial post had ended last October, when his spell with Argentina’s Platense came to a close.
The Campeones Cup was contested by Miami as reigning MLS Cup holders. They won that league title for the first time in the club’s brief existence last December, and the victory over Cruz Azul now adds another first: Inter Miami had never previously lifted this particular cross-border prize.
For a club built around continental attention, the result offered more than a reset after a difficult stretch. It gave González an immediate bond with Messi and his squad, and gave Miami a trophy night that connected Florida with Mexico across a familiar regional football rivalry.
