Miami (AFP) – Thomas Mueller says his past results against Lionel Messi will count for little when he lines up for the Vancouver Whitecaps against Inter Miami in the MLS Cup final on Saturday. German great Mueller, who joined Vancouver in August from Bayern Munich, has a winning record against Messi over the years both for club and country. But the charismatic 36-year-old says past results — Mueller has finished on the winning side in seven of 10 meetings with Messi — will be irrelevant in Saturday’s Major League Soccer showpiece in Florida.
“I look back in the past and I feel very comfortable with that, because that’s already in the books, and I had a lot of great experience in these games with my teams, so it was fun,” said Mueller, whose wins against Messi include Germany’s 1-0 victory over Argentina in the 2014 World Cup final. “But it doesn’t really matter for Saturday, it’s a new game,” Mueller added. “Maybe it gives you the feeling that I always have my confidence to beat someone or to compete with someone as a team and as an individual. So I don’t need my history that much to be confident.”
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Mueller also played down the significance of Vancouver’s dominance of Messi and Miami during this season’s CONCACAF Champions Cup semi-finals, when the Whitecaps won home and away to secure a 5-1 aggregate victory. “They won against Inter Miami this season twice. But what does it mean?,” Mueller said. “It gives you a little bit of good feeling. But in the end, the game is decided on the pitch and on Saturday — in the future. So it’s a nice thing to talk about, and I hope we can continue to talk about it Saturday after the game.”
As well as the 2014 World Cup final, Mueller’s wins over Messi include Bayern Munich’s 8-2 humiliation of Barcelona in the Champions League quarter-finals in 2020, when the German star scored twice and was man-of-the-match. He also played in Bayern’s 2-0 Champions League second leg win over Paris Saint-Germain in 2023 in a game that would turn out to be Messi’s last appearance in European competition.
© 2024 AFP
