CLEVELAND, Ohio — Huntington Bank Field has hosted hundreds of American football games in its history. But on Saturday, a different kind of football is coming to downtown Cleveland and the shores of Lake Erie including one of the best players of our generation. Lionel Messi will make his first trip to Cleveland when he and his Inter Miami squad face the Columbus Crew in a massive early-season Major League Soccer showdown. How to watch or attend the match Kickoff will be at 4:30 p.m. Eastern. Tickets for this match are still available all the way up until kickoff. The Crew also announced that upper midfield tickets are now on sale on Ticketmaster. If you can’t make it to the match, it will be televised exclusively on MLS Season Pass, which costs $99 for the season or $14.99 per month if you don’t have a subscription to Apple TV+. If you do subscribe to Apple TV+ but don’t have MLS Season Pass, it costs $79 for the season or $12.99 per month What happened the last time the teams met? This will be the second time Messi faced the Crew. The first matchup came back in October of 2024, and it lived up to the billing of the best player of the 21st century vs. the then-reigning MLS Cup champions. Messi scored twice, including once on a vintage Messi free kick, and a clutch Inter Miami penalty save late in the second half gave them a 3-2 win at Lower.com Field in Columbus. That match was a sellout at a stadium that has a capacity of just more than 20,000 fans. But Saturday’s match will be played in the much bigger Huntington Bank Field, which has more than triple the capacity of the Crew’s normal home. Both the Crew and the Browns are owned by Jimmy and Dee Haslam, thus a reason why the match is being played in Cleveland. The appeal of Messi and Inter Miami Lionel Messi is simply one of the greatest players of all time, earning eight Ballon D’Or Awards as the best soccer player in the world. Messi’s teams have also won a lot as he’s won four Champions League trophies and 10 La Liga titles with FC Barcelona, and he also helped Paris Saint-Germain win a pair of Ligue 1 championships in France. Since he came to MLS in 2023, record crowds have followed, including on Sunday when the Chicago Fire hosted Inter Miami in front of a franchise record 62,358 fans at Soldier Field. Inter Miami won the Supporters’ Shield in 2024 as the league’s top team in the regular season, and they are off to a good start again in 2025. Messi has three goals and two assists in five matches for Inter Miami, which sits fourth in the Eastern Conference at 15 points in seven matches played. In addition to Messi, Inter Miami has several other big-name players on its roster including some of Messi’s old teammates at Barcelona in Luis Suarez, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba. What to know about the Crew Despite selling off star striker Cucho Hernandez to La Liga club Real Betis in Spain and trading forward Christian Ramirez to the LA Galaxy in the offseason, the Crew sit atop the Eastern Conference at 5-0-3 (18 points), with their most recent win being a 2-1 victory at St. Louis CITY FC on Sunday night. The Crew attack is now led by a pair of high-end forwards in the veteran Diego Rossi and a blossoming young Canadian in 22-year-old Jacen Russell-Rowe. Rossi has a team-high five goals, including one on Sunday, and Russell-Rowe has three, two shy of matching his career high for a season. Defensively, the Crew have several key players that have helped them concede only six goals this season including goalkeeper Patrick Schulte, reigning MLS Defender of the Year Steven Moreira and Olmsted Falls native Sean Zawadzki, who was a homegrown product from the Crew Academy and is now a fixture on manager Wilfried Nancy’s starting roster. Saturday could also be a big day for the Crew in another way. Back on Friday, the team officially acquired star midfielder Daniel Gazdag from the Philadelphia Union for $4.5 million. Gazdag has 59 goals and 20 assists in 126 career matches in MLS, with the first 125 being with the Union. He made his Crew debut on Sunday in St. Louis off the bench, and Saturday vs. Inter Miami could be his first start for Columbus.