Inter Miami caps off best regular season in MLS history with hat-trick from Lionel Messi

Lionel Messi and Inter Miami have put together the best regular season in Major League Soccer history.

Messi had three goals and an assist in the second half alone, Luis Suárez had a pair of first-half goals and Inter Miami beat the New England Revolution 6-2 on Saturday night, finishing the season with an MLS-record 74 points — one more than the Revolution had in 2021.

At 22-4-8 in league play, Inter Miami finished the season with a .765 winning percentage for another MLS record. There were four teams — D.C. United (24-8) and the LA Galaxy (24-8) in 1998, LAFC (21-4-9) in 2019 and New England (22-5-7) in 2021 — that finished an MLS season with a .750 winning percentage, which was the top spot until Saturday night.

Now, the top spot is Inter Miami's by any measure, both in terms of points and best won-lost-tied mark. Inter Miami also became the eighth team in MLS history to get through a regular season with only four losses, tying another record.

Messi — who played about 35 minutes and still scored three times Saturday — finished the regular season with 20 goals and 16 assists in 19 matches.

Suarez got to 20 goals in his first MLS season, his strikes — coming about 3 minutes apart — helping Inter Miami erase an early 2-0 deficit.

Luca Langoni and Dylan Borrero had the goals for New England.

The rest of the match was all Miami.

Suarez's brace pulled the hosts into a tie by halftime and Benja Cremaschi scored the go-ahead goal in the 58th minute for Inter Miami. Messi had an assist on Cremaschi’s goal, one that came just seconds after the eight-time Ballon d’Or winner subbed into the match.

There had been some question about whether Messi would play at all, especially since Inter Miami had already wrapped up the