Winning a professional soccer match is difficult enough on the day.

Trying to defeat an opponent that features someone who plays as if he can peer into the future, well, that makes it nearly impossible.

Ever since Lionel Messi grew into a one-of-a-kind threat with a ball at his feet, coaches who crossed paths with the Argentinian superstar struggled to help their teams stop him from creating goals and beating them.

Neither man nor zonal marking, nor altering the number of defenders, nor pressing, parking the bus or pretty much any tactical device they conceived of has proven more useful in containing Messi than any other.

Sometimes something works, but that’s generally more indicative of an all-out team effort to limit Messi’s influence than a particular strategy born in film rooms and practice fields.

Reared at La Masia, FC Barcelona’s famed youth academy, the unstoppable 36-year-old current World Cup champion could really be shut down one way.

He needed to go somewhere else.

And because it actually happened this summer when Messi departed the Old World for the New, the quest to defang arguably the best soccer player ever, who keeps delivering daggers with Inter Miami CF and Major League Soccer as a matter of course, now hangs over the heads of technical staffs across North America.

Opponents on this side of the Atlantic have quickly experienced what their European counterparts were conditioned to expect long ago.

FC Cincinnati head coach Pat Noonan captured this reality following a gutting 120-minute U.S. Open Cup semifinal loss to Miami via penalty kicks on Aug. 23, a night in which Messi contributed two assists, the last of which saved his team in the 97th minute with a perfect delivery into the box.

Noting the various approaches opponents attempt to disrupt Messi, “he still understands how to find the game and find the ball and moments to make plays,” Noonan said after the clear Supporters’ Shield leaders fell for only the second time in 18 matches at home this year. “And even when you do things right, even when you get pressure to a top player like him, he has the ability to beat you one-on-one and now the whole picture changes how you have to defend the goal.”

Since July 21, between the Leagues Cup, which Miami won, and the resumption of MLS play, the attacking midfielder of all attacking midfielders, a walking defibrillator, jolted his new club to life with 11 goals and three assists.

A scoreless draw at home against Nashville on Wednesday improved Messi’s unbeaten run to 10 matches (nine wins). But during their second clash in less than two weeks Nashville, led by English manager Gary Smith, embraced its defensive mindset and stifled Miami using a deep low block to clog the goal area.

For the league’s worst team prior to his arrival (alongside former Barcelona teammates Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba), it marked the first match when Miami did not score a goal with Messi on the field.

Sunday night at BMO Stadium, the defending MLS Cup champion Los Angeles Football Club gets the next crack at becoming the first CONCACAF region club to beat the world’s best player since he arrived playing his joyful, mesmerizing best.

Despite Wednesday’s result, LAFC is unlikely to mimic Nashville’s tactics.

“We are not a team that could defend in the box for 90 minutes,” said LAFC defender Giorgio Chiellini, who anchored back lines with Juventus and the Italian national team that both shut out and were exposed by Messi. “It’s a different philosophy. It’s a different quality of player.”

Instead, LAFC remains committed to its “rock and roll” vertical, high-pressing, turnover-inducing style.

“We can have some adjustments,” Chiellini said, “but not completely change our philosophy because this won’t work 100%.

“We will need an effort from all the team and it’s the only way that could work. Be respectful but not scared.”

With more than a week to prepare, LAFC coach Steve Cherundolo, his staff, the club’s data analysts and, of course, the players took five days to work out how they want to play 11-on-11 while coping with Messi.

“Because of obviously his ability and the way he plays it’s an illusion to try and think you can stop him for 90 minutes,” Cherundolo said Friday.

“If you try and focus on that you’re going to lose out on opportunities to actually beat Miami,” LAFC’s head coach said. “And that’s where our focus is in making sure as a collective they have to defend, as a collective they have to work hard and put a very intense and top shift to beat us. That’s where our focus is, not just one situation.”

Preparation began in earnest on Monday with assistant coach Marc Dos Santos taking the lead on video scouting.

Depending on the number of games LAFC has in any given month, those duties get staggered among the staff, including Cherundolo and assistant coach Ante Razov.

This wasn’t the first time Dos Santos scouted Messi. A few weeks after winning the MLS Cup, as the Canadian coach completed his UEFA pro license last November, he was tasked with breaking down a Champions League match and did so when Manchester City hosted Paris Saint-Germain.

“Never last year did I think one day I’d be doing a report where I actually have to talk about Messi, but against us,” he said. “I told Ante now it’s real.”

As Dos Santos zeroed in on Miami, dissecting film into digestible segments to be shared with players during the three days leading up to the match, “the choice of clips has to be very coherent,” he said. “If you show a little bit of everything they don’t get one clear message.”

LAFC generally sorts through film over an opponent’s previous five games, using numbers from the analysis team to lend context to what their eyes identify as patterns of play worth highlighting.

Facing any opponent, LAFC scouts for five key moments.

The run-of-play – defensive organization, that is to say, what happens when they lose the ball, and offensive organization, what happens when they win the ball – comprises four of these instances and is coached on separate days.

The fifth component is set pieces. The best defense against Messi in that department has long been not conceding them in the first place, which like everything else his opponents contend with is easier said than done.

There’s understanding the uniqueness of his movement, for instance.

“He doesn’t walk,” Dos Santos said. “I would call it roam. Hang out. Sniffing where the ball is going to go. And then he scans. It’s going to happen. It’s crazy. Suddenly he has this burst. He sees something. This is how it’s going to develop. It’s like he sees the future. When he’s walking or roaming he’s looking at the future. ‘Oh, I saw that. This is where the ball is going to go.’ And he ends up going there.”

Messi-led teams are transition offense nightmares. His ability to run directly at defenders or find teammates in space, especially when no one else would think to try, offers coaches such as Inter Miami’s Tata Martino chances to build squads around the seven-time Ballon d’Or winner’s preternatural soccer IQ.

Finding the right spots in the right moments while appearing to take a leisurely stroll as everyone else huffs and puffs around the field is a hallmark of his greatness.

“He could seem sleepy for 85 of 90 minutes but in that five minutes that is split in 10 actions of 30 seconds, he could be devastating,” Chiellini said. “That’s the problem. That’s a big problem. In 10 seconds he could change the game. That’s a top player.”

That’s Messi. And that’s the solution LAFC will try to find on Sunday.

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