Messi healthy, available to play vs. Atlanta - Miami's Martino - ESPN

Lionel Messi is healthy and will be available for selection Saturday's road game against Atlanta United FC, Inter Miami CF coach Gerardo «Tata» Martino said on Friday.

Messi uncharacteristically left Argentina's World Cup qualifying win last week over Ecuador before the final whistle, and while he did make Wednesday's trip to Bolívia, he was not named in coach Lionel Scaloni's 23-man squad for the 3-0 victory at La Paz's high altitude.

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«He is fine. But we will wait until after training today to make a decision,» Martino said about how much Messi will feature against Atlanta. «We will be careful with him because we have a lot of important games in a short span.»

Miami's schedule was packed before the international break, and they have a quick turnaround before Wednesday's home match with Toronto FC. Messi will also have more World Cup qualifiers to navigate in October, with CONMEBOL qualifiers against Paraguay (Oct. 12) and Peru (Oct. 17).

Miami's games around that time would both be against Charlotte FC: at home on Wednesday, Oct. 18, and up in North Carolina on Saturday, Oct. 21 to close out the regular season.

«This is something that we knew would happen at some point, but that he would begin to get used to our needs, especially for seasons like this with a lot of matches,» said Martino in regard to the prospect of resting Messi more due to his schedule.

«Playing each match, 90 minutes each game, two to three days with travel in between would get difficult.»

Messi trained with the team on both Thursday and Friday, and while Atlanta plays on turf, the 36-year-old said in his lone news conference last month that he played on turf as a youth and wouldn't have a problem