Inter Miami vs Atlanta United: Messi, standings, TV
Returns to Nu Stadium with Miami second in the East and Atlanta stuck 13th. Lionel Messi’s side just won 7-1, while Tata Martino warns one moment can still…
MIAMI — Inter Miami vs Atlanta United puts second-place Miami against a struggling Atlanta side on Saturday, Sept. 5, at Nu Stadium in Major League Soccer action. The match comes on Matchday 23, with Lionel Messi’s team carrying 42 points after 22 games and Atlanta United sitting 13th on 21 points after 22 matches.
The gap is sharp. Miami can keep pressure on the top of the Eastern Conference, while Atlanta needs points fast to stop its slide and keep its season from slipping further out of reach.
Miami arrives with momentum
Inter Miami enter after a 7-1 win over CF Montreal, a result that stood out after a run in which the club had lost three of its previous four matches in all competitions. That blowout did not erase the uneven stretch before it, but it did restore some confidence around a team that still sits near the top of the table.
Atlanta comes in from the other direction. Gerardo Martino’s side lost 2-0 at Charlotte FC in its last outing and remains stuck in 13th place in the Eastern Conference. The Five Stripes have shown they can put together a run, with three wins in five across all competitions, but road form against stronger opponents has become a problem.
Martino faces his former club
The game carries extra weight for Martino, who returned to MLS in November 2025 to lead Atlanta United for a second time. He previously coached Inter Miami from June 2023 to November 2024, leaving after the 2024 MLS Cup playoffs. During that spell, he helped deliver the club’s first two titles, including the 2023 Leagues Cup and the 2024 Supporters’ Shield.
Now he is on the opposite bench. And the Messi question is still unavoidable.
ESPN quoted Martino warning Atlanta not to think there is a clean way to shut down the Argentina captain. “We've just seen what he did at the World Cup at the age of 39, everything that happened in a match went through him. There's no team capable of neutralizing him for the entire 92 or 93 or 95 minutes of the match,” Martino said.
He added: “There is always a decisive moment. Sometimes there are many moments in a match, at other times, like in the game against England, it comes down to a single moment, and then it's over. There is no turning back. I told the players: even if we control the match for 89 minutes, we could still lose it.”
What the matchup means now
For Miami, this is about staying in the hunt and not wasting the cushion its position has built. For Atlanta, the math is more brutal. One more poor result would deepen the pressure on a team already trying to recover from a rocky start and a long stretch of inconsistency.
The match is scheduled to kick off at 4:30 p.m. Pacific Time, which is 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time, and coverage is available through Apple TV, which holds the league’s streaming rights. In the United States, the game can also be heard on SiriusXM FC. Miami’s new permanent home at Nu Stadium opened in April 2026, and Atlanta now walks into it with 21 points, 13th place, and little room left to drift.
