Inter Miami tore apart CF Montreal with a dominant performance, running out 7-1 winners in a result that far exceeded expectations on the night. Casemiro opened the scoring in the 20th minute with the assist from T. Segovia, but Montreal briefly made a game of it when Herbers levelled just before the half-hour mark, set up by Streit. The turning point came eight minutes later when Petrasso put through his own goal to hand Miami the lead again. From there it was one-way traffic. Messi put Miami 3-1 up in the 52nd minute, then Suarez made it four on 80 minutes with Messi providing the assist. Messi bagged his second of the night six minutes later, this time from a De Paul assist, before Shaw added a fifth and Messi completed a hat-trick in the 90th minute to cap a performance that Montreal's depleted squad simply couldn't live with.

Our model leaned toward a narrow 2-1 Miami win, which had a 58 per cent probability as the most likely single outcome. The model got the direction right — Miami's home record and attacking pedigree in this fixture, shown in recent H2H wins by 4-1 and 4-2 margins, all pointed toward a home victory. What nobody saw coming was the sheer gulf in class on the night. The pre-match read suggested both teams would score and the game would clear 2.5 goals, but Miami's clinical finishing combined with Montreal's injury woes created a chasm that proved far wider than the underlying metrics had weighted. It was the right call on the winner, decisively the wrong one on the scoreline.