Inter Miami's Early Stumbles Not Discouraging Club in Ambition-Filled MLS Venture
WASHINGTON — Inter Miami had been an existing, competing soccer team for all of eight days, yet it was already well-versed in the sport’s penchant for cruelty. Absent a club motto, owner David Beckham might want to consider former manager Alex Ferguson’s immortal exclamation, “Football, bloody hell!” as a placeholder.
There were no scheduling favors done for the expansion outfit. Its inaugural game was at 2019 Supporters' Shield winner Los Angeles FC. But while Inter was far from home, it was hardly in over its head. There were stretches where it played LAFC on level terms, and in goalkeeper Luis Robles’s opinion, expressed afterward to the Miami Herald, “We played well enough to earn a point.”
But the soccer gods were powerless to stop Carlos Vela, who won the game for LAFC with an audacious, goal-of-the-week-worthy chip toward the end of the first half.
Then it was on to Washington, D.C., for Saturday’s meeting with a D.C. United squad that’s far less sure of itself than LAFC. Miami’s biggest signing, Mexican midfielder Rodolfo Pizarro, scored the club’s first goal in just the second minute and through the rest of the first half, the visitors’ new back three—Inter played with four defenders in L.A.—left D.C.’s midfield compressed, outmanned and struggling to find its footing. In the 51st minute, Scottish midfielder Lewis Morgan ripped a deflected shot past D.C.’s Bill Hamid, and Inter appeared to be closing in on its first three points.
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Then came the cruelty. After a VAR consult, Morgan’s goal was ruled out because of a handball during the build-up by center back Román Torres, which also was adjudged to be a denial of an obvious goal scoring opportunity. Torres was ejected. The game was tied in the 59th, and then in the 61st, just 10 minutes after Inter was celebrating what it thought was a two-goal lead, United defender Frédéric Brillant put the hosts up, 2-1. Inter had imploded.
But Miami’s heart remained, and over the final 20 minutes, it dominated the ball and had the better chances against the extra man. It was good soccer. It just wasn’t winning soccer.
“We weren’t dictating much,” United coach Ben Olsen said afterward. “It was them dictating the game.”
So where is this marquee expansion franchise after its first two games, with its home opener against the LA Galaxy coming this weekend? Down, but far from discouraged. Inter is a project six years in the making, one that has survived multiple failed stadium bids and several changes in ownership composition. The club has been buttressed as much by hope and rumor as by real progress, and it’s almost always been about better days ahead. For the most part, it’s had to be. Now, even though there are players and coaches in place and games on the schedule, construction still hasn’t started on a permanent stadium in Miami and the massive, show-stopper signings, with all due respect to Pizarro, still haven’t materialized.
So they forge ahead, just like Beckham and Co. have been doing for years.
“Looking at our first two performances, there’s a lot to be proud of, and the thing that really sticks out is our heart, our effort and the way that we fight,” Robles told SI.com at Audi Field. “It’s tough that after two results we don’t have any points, but we understand it’s a process and eventually the points will come and eventually the wins will come, and we have to continue to build off what we have right now.”
What Inter has is a manager and front office the players appear to believe in, a star in Pizarro, some promising young talent and veterans like Robles who’ve been through the MLS wars and understand the length and variance of a season. Inter’s ability to switch so smoothly to the back three, which pushed Dylan Nealis and Ben Sweat into the midfield’s wide areas, was promising for a team that’s still searching for chemistry and a tactical foundation. And its ability to move the ball when down a man suggested that chemistry is starting to build.
Midfielder Wil Trapp, who arrived from the Columbus Crew, said coach Diego Alonso has “done a good job of communicating how we want to play and getting us to understand the principles of it. It’s maybe not always the same tactics every single game, but there are principles within a game that we want to execute and want to put forward. So it’s really about catching those every day.”
Miami’s ability to stay on the front foot and dominate possession during the game’s final stages was “a reflection of our coach’s personality,” Robles said. “He wants us to be brave. He wants us to be courageous in the way that we play and even down a man, I felt like that’s what we were.”
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Both Robles (New York Red Bulls) and Trapp came from clubs with distinct, identifiable playing styles that were as much a part of their brand as the logo and team colors. That can take seasons to develop and mature. Miami has had a few weeks of training and two games. Since both veterans understand that as well as anyone, they were able to see the bigger picture even in the moments following a frustrating defeat.
“Every game matters. Every game we’re pushing, and when it doesn’t go our way of course it’s disappointing. But also having the clarity of the process of things is important too,” Trapp told SI.com.
Added Robles: “We are a work in progress, and as we continue to construct our lineup, there’s just a lot of new things happening. We have a new coach to MLS. We have a lot of new players to MLS. We have a completely new group, as a group, in the locker room. You look at LAFC and you have to sit back and admire what they’ve done in two years, because they were in the same position as us two years ago. And yet now as you look at them in 2020, you see how they continue to build off one another as they carve out their identity. It becomes clearer.
“I’m confident that the same thing will happen here,” he continued. “Maybe we don’t necessarily have a clear cut identity, but we have the right guys in place, whether it’s in the front office, the coaching staff or the locker room, to eventually carve out that identity.”
Using LAFC as a role model is indicative of Inter’s ambitions: Spend big, win big, change the paradigm. Neither LAFC nor its role model, Atlanta United, started 0-2-0, however. LAFC’s first home game was at Banc of California Stadium. Atlanta’s was at Georgia Tech, but Mercedes-Benz Stadium was nearing completion. Both won trophies in their second seasons, and both were closer to the finished product at the start of their first than Miami.
Inter’s South Florida debut will be Saturday afternoon at a temporary venue constructed on the old Lockhart Stadium site in Fort Lauderdale, some 30 miles north of downtown Miami. It looks like a really, really nice temporary venue, featuring 18,000 colorful seats, roofing over the sideline stands, and field-level luxury suites. But it’s not in Miami, and it’s certainly a far cry from the stunning stadium the club is proposing to build at Miami Freedom Park.
Perhaps the temporary venue is a good metaphor for Inter itself. It’s functional, but it remains in the news more because of what might be coming than what’s already there. While the team was preparing for LAFC and D.C., Beckham was discussing the possibility of signing Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo during an appearance on The Tonight Show.
That sort of hype will remain Inter’s soundtrack until the reality meets the potential. What the players have already demonstrated on the field, however, shouldn’t be overlooked. There are signs of promise and progress.
“For us, you want to be playing with the best players possible in a club that has high aspirations, and that’s what we have here in Miami,” Trapp said. “Rome wasn’t built in a day. It’s all a process of stepping stones to get to where we want to be. It’s good to have ownership that has the vision. What that group has done very well, the coaching staff has done very well, [sporting director Paul McDonough] and the front office staff has done well, is focusing on the process of now, this moment, of this team, of this group, and then building and building.”
