New Los Angeles FC coach Marc Dos Santos gave his team an A+ for the way they handled Lionel Messi in Saturday's season-opening victory over Inter Miami.

LAFC swept the reigning MLS Cup champions aside with a 3-0 win at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, where a crowd of 75,673 made it the best-attended matchday one game in league history.

David Martinez, Denis Bouanga and Nathan Ordaz got the goals, with Son Heung-min also playing an important role as he teed up the opener.

Messi, by contrast, was a peripheral figure after overcoming a hamstring issue to play the full 90 minutes.

The Argentina icon had four shots, but none of those hit the target, and they had a total expected goals (xG) value of just 0.21.

Messi did create three chances for his team-mates, the joint-most of any player on the pitch alongside Son and Bouanga, but LAFC thoroughly deserved their victory after winning the xG battle by 3.3 to 0.8.

Speaking after the game, Dos Santos – who replaced Steve Cherundolo in December – said: "When we prepared for the game, we prepared to face the best Messi possible.

"I think that part of our game today was A+. The part of possession was a B. We can be much better, and we want to be much better.

"But our guys were a team, we suffered together. We dealt with a lot of good plays, and that's important going forward."

LAFC's victory was made all the more impressive by the fact that it came just four days after they travelled to Honduras to face Real Espana in the first leg of a CONCACAF Champions Cup tie, winning 6-1.

"A very positive thing is we played on Tuesday in Honduras," Dos Santos said. "We had a very long flight, we had one day of training, and we were able to suffer as a team.

"That quality of being able to suffer as a team together is an important quality."