Cote: Messi, Inter Miami ouster in MLS playoffs’ first round a crushing end to magic season | Opinion

The team with the best regular season record in Major League Soccer history -- led by the best player ever in Lionel Messi -- did not survive the first round of the playoffs.

Inter Miami lost a must-win game at home Saturday night to an Atlanta United team that barely snuck into the postseason with a losing record.

The announcer on Apple TV said beforehand it would be “an upset for the ages” if the unthinkable happened. But it happened.

The slingshot took care of Goliath. The Maserati just lost to a Toyota Tercel.

And now the entire league, its playoffs and its TV ratings all sag as MLS loses its biggest-draw team by far in the first round.

Inter Miami’s goal of an MLS Cup championship in Messi’s first full season with the club perished in a wild 3-2 loss that sends Atlanta on to face Orlando City in the conference semifinals and leaves Miami to try to figure what went so wrong to end a season that went so right.

“This was a game we could have won,” Inter Miami coach Tata Martino said afterward. “We had a lot of scoring opportunities, were close to the Atlanta goal many times. When you are eliminated from the playoffs in the quarterfinals, the season cannot be considered a success. We made a lot of progress. But if you think about our expectations that we had, we obviously fell short.”

It was a brutal day for South Florida sports hearts broken by Atlanta.

Earlier Saturday, in Atlanta, the No. 4-ranked and unbeaten Miami Hurricanes football team suffered a first loss at Georgia Tech.

Some eight hours later in Fort Lauderdale, star-laden Inter Miami lost its second of three games to its huge underdog opponent to end its season much too soon.

Miami had won the MLS Supporters’ Shield for the best season record with 74 standings points, the all-time most. Miami also became the 21st Supporters’ Shield winner in 29 league seasons to not win the MLS Cup. But the first so heavily favored to do so.

The first with Lionel Messi.

“This is vital for the club’s growth,” Messi himself had said of the imperative for a league championship.

Not getting it -- or even coming close -- renders this season a huge disappointment that should not be equivocated.

Miami led early 1-0 in the 17th minute on Matias Rojas’ goal -- a put-in off a Messi shot deflected by Atlanta goalkeeper Brad Guzan onto Rojas’ foot.

The cheering at Chase Stadium hadn’t even subsided when Atlanta tied it 1-1 on a Jamal Thiare shot in the 19th minute that beat Miami goalie Drake Callender on his near-side.

Bang! Quick as that, in the 21st minute, the Five Stripes were up 2-1 on another Thiare goal on a defensive breakdown bad enough that Callender threw his arms up in frustration.

Miami appeared to tie it soon after but a Diego Gomez shot into the net was waved off for offside.

Messi and Luis Suarez later both had shots that required stellar saves by Guzan.

Miami tied it for real at 2-2 in the 65th minute on Messi’s downward header in-close off a cross. Messi is known for his golden left foot but at 5-7, seldom for his forehead. But this was a golden strike.

But Miami woujld lose in bizarre fashionn in the 76th minute on a header by Atlanta’s Bartosz Slisz that seemed to catch the Herons asleep. An Inter Miami player was down inside the box, injured, but played went on. Unfortunately while Miami players seemed to prioritize gesturing at the referee for a time stoppage, Atlanta properly continued playing because no whistle had sounded.

It was a brutal way to lose a game Miami had dominated in so many ways, leading in shots , shots on goal, corner kicks and ball possession.

Miami with Messi and former Barcelona teammates Luis Suárez, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba had by far the biggest MLS payroll, a league record high. Messi’s total compensation of $20.45 million exceeded that of the entire Atlanta team.

Messi, 37, has one more season left in his Miami contract.

Before the game, Inter Miami midfielder Federico Redondo had put the must-win stakes of Saturday’s game in perspective.

“Es un partido de matar o morir,” he sasid in Spanish.

He said, “It’s a game in which to kill or be killed.”

It was the best team’s season that died.

And neither the Supporters’ Shield nor Lionel Messi could do a thing to stop it.