Wednesday, April 2 | 8:30 p.m. PT

🏟: BMO Stadium – Los Angeles, CA

🖥: FS1, TUDN, ViX

📻: 710 AM ESPN

One of the year’s most anticipated club football matchups comes to Los Angeles on Wednesday night when LAFC hosts Inter Miami at BMO Stadium in Leg One of their two-match Quarterfinal series in Concacaf Champions Cup.

LAFC, the 2024 U.S. Open Cup champions, and Inter Miami, winners of last year’s Supporters’ Shield, each won a major trophy in ’24. Theirs is the only Quarterfinal matchup among the four in Concacaf Champions Cup 2025 that can make such a claim.

This two-match duel between two young but accomplished MLS clubs (the second leg will be played in South Florida next Wednesday) will produce an aggregate-goal winner who moves on to the Semifinal round and a date with the winner of the Vancouver Whitecaps vs. Pumas UNAM Quarterfinal.

Now in its 60th year, Concacaf Champions Cup is this region’s premier men’s club competition. This year’s edition began in early February with a field consisting of the 27 top clubs in North America, Central America and the Caribbean. Clubs contest two-game, total-goal series consisting of a home and an away leg until the last two remaining combatants reach the tournament Final.

The CCC Final is scheduled for June 1 and will be decided in a single match. LAFC reached the Concacaf Champions Cup Final in both of its previous CCC appearances (2020, 2023).

LAFC’s Denis Bouanga, who played against Inter Miami’s Lionel Messi in France’s Ligue 1 and who joined him on the MLS Best XI list in 2024, has recorded 10 goals and four assists in 12 career CCC appearances. Messi has registered five goals and two assists in his six career CCC appearances.

Messi, the reigning MLS MVP and eight-time Ballon d’Or winner, returned from injury over the weekend and is expected to play Wednesday night.

Bouanga scored three of LAFC’s four goals in its Round-of-16 win over the Columbus Crew earlier this month and was named to the CCC Round of 16 Best XI for his efforts, along with LAFC goalkeeper Hugo Lloris, who kept a clean sheet against Columbus in Leg One and turned in a world-class performance in Leg Two to secure the Black & Gold’s advancement.

One of Messi’s five career CCC goals came in the second leg of Miami’s 4-0 aggregate defeat of Cavalier S.C. of Jamaica earlier this month in the Round of 16. Striker Luis Suarez scored in both legs against Cavalier and joined Bouanga and Lloris on the Round-of-16 Best XI list.

Where MLS play is concerned, Miami stands atop the Supporters’ Shield standings with a 4W-0L-1D record. The Herons defeated the Philadelphia Union last Saturday, 2-1, with Messi entering the match in the 55th minute and scoring in the 57th. Miami managed just six shots against the Union (three on target), while allowing 20 total shots (six on target).

LAFC traveled to San Diego on Saturday for its first ever match against MLS’ newest team and fell 3-2, despite battling back from a three-nil deficit through goals from its two most recent acquisitions, fullback Artem Smoliakov and winger Cengiz Ünder. LAFC stands eighth in the Western Conference and 16th in the Supporters’ Shield race with a league record of 3-3-0.

Some of the brightest moments in LAFC’s eight-year history have come in Concacaf play. This will be LAFC’s third trip to the CCC Quarterfinals. The club advanced to the Semifinals in both previous appearances.

Wednesday marks the first time that LAFC and Miami (who entered MLS in 2018 and 2020, respectively) have met in CCC play, and just their fourth meeting overall. LAFC leads the all-time series, two wins to one. Miami’s lone victory came at BMO Stadium in the 2023 regular season, a 3-1 victory in which Messi registered two assists.

It begins the game with the urgency it showed at kickoff of its high-stakes CCC matches in 2020 and 2023. The Black & Gold’s renowned home-field advantage will push the team toward earning Wednesday’s opening goal (LAFC is 5-0-0 this year when that happens, in all competitions). Scoring first will be a crucial plot point as LAFC tries to secure a win at home, and preferably a clean sheet, before heading to Miami for next week’s deciding Leg Two.

“When we’re aggressive and we are confident and play how we want to play and stay connected,” LAFC head coach Steve Cherundolo said after his team’s strong second half in San Diego, “I think we’re quite dangerous and very good. We need to make sure we’re only showing the good side.”

It secures at least a draw. Despite its star-filled roster and reputation for free-flowing attacks, the Herons likely realize that tying LAFC in LA would be equivalent to a win. Survival in this competition often entails earning a point on the road. Making the host team’s net bulge—and pocketing an advantage in CCC’s “away goals” tiebreaker—would be gravy. An outright victory Wednesday night would place Messi & Company within touching distance of the Semifinals.