Lionel Messi will sit out Inter Miami\u2019s Major League Soccer showdown with Florida rivals Orlando on Sunday as he recovers from a \u201cminor\u201d muscle injury, coach Javier Mascherano confirmed. \u201cNo, Leo will not be available tomorrow,\u201d Mascherano said. \u201cHe\u2019s doing well, but it would be unwise to risk him for the Orlando game with so much ahead of us. We\u2019re confident he\u2019ll be back soon.\u201d Following the Florida Derby against Orlando, Inter Miami will face LA Galaxy on August 16, before meeting Mexico\u2019s Tigres UANL in the Leagues Cup quarter-finals three days later. The eight-time Ballon d\u2019Or winner missed Miami\u2019s last Leagues Cup group match after sustaining the injury to his upper right leg during a win over Necaxa on August 2. Inter Miami currently sit fifth in the MLS Eastern Conference, eight points behind leaders Philadelphia and just one point ahead of Orlando, with three games in hand. Despite the setback for Messi, Miami have been buoyed by the arrival of his Argentine compatriot Rodrigo De Paul, who scored his first goal for the Herons in a 3-1 victory over Pumas UNAM that clinched their Leagues Cup quarter-final berth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lionel Messi will sit out Inter Miami\u2019s Major League Soccer showdown with Florida rivals Orlando on Sunday as he recovers from a \u201cminor\u201d muscle injury,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26488,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}