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| Fuck Lays on so, so many levels. |
I came this close to lumping the Miami Fusion in with Inter Miami CF, and this was to the point of doing the math, but decided the gap separating the two teams was too vast. The Fusion joined in the same pre-contraction expansion season as the Chicago Fire, only, when contraction did come, the league opted to keep Chicago and cut Florida loose…of which, maybe it’s time for an early 2000s revival. I opted against, even if OG Miami was a good, fun team and even that’s before getting to the fact that MLS legends like Kyle Beckerman, Pablo Mastroeni and Nick Rimando started their careers in sunny Florida, which alone marks them as a worthy footnote for posterity…
…but today’s Miami lives in a totally different ZIP code than the old team and about 20 floors higher. It was born a glamour team and, as befits a team with ambition to match the buckets full of cash they had lying around, 2020 Miami went so rules-breaking big on its first roster-build that it forced the league to sanction it for playing a shell-game with their roster compliance. They played through the sanctions (which, factually, didn’t bite till the following season) and squeaked into the 2020 playoffs, if only due to the fact the playoff pool was out-of-control-house-party big that season (because COVID) and even then it took a wild card slot an MLS HQ acting as a village. In fact, Miami never made the playoffs as anything better than a wild card until 2024 – which, 1) doesn’t count in these parts* and 2) took riding Gonzalo Higuain’s last gasp to come off. I briefly became obsessed with Miami’s chances at the beginning of 2023 when they started strong on the back of sterling midfield performances from Gregore and Jean Mota, but Gregore went down for most (if not all) of the season by the third game and Mota succumbed to an injury of his own just a couple games later. Miami’s cruel summer to arrived ahead of schedule - they went winless and generally stepped on rakes from the middle of May to the middle July – and then came the ringers. Lionel Messi arrived first, of course, but then came Sergio Busquets, Jordi Alba, and…Robert Taylor. With all that star power and a new director (they bumped now-Portland Timbers head coach, Phil Neville, for Tata Martino), Miami won its first trophy, the 2023 Leagues Cup. They could not, however, climb out of the hole the pre-ringer team dug over those two months of dining on shit once a week…and we all know where things go from here, not least because the league never allows us to forget that Messi Is Here.
Total Joy Points: 10
How They Earned Them (& *How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
Supporters’ Shield: 2024
Leagues Cup: 2023
CCL Quarterfinals: 2024
U.S. Open Cup Runner-Up: 2023
Long-Term Tendencies
Predictable as the sunrise here: every season was either bad or very bad for Miami until they built the super-team. I suppose that's the only real tendency has: the willingness and ability to throw money at their problems and a global (or at least regional) destination for a home.
How 2024 Measured Up
See above, honestly. While Miami made a strong run at the single-season record for goals scored, they couldn’t catch either the 85 goals scored by the 1998 Los Angeles Galaxy and 2019 Los Angeles FC. They did, however, claim not just the Supporters’ Shield, they also clawed the record for the most points earned in a single season from the desiccated shell of the New England Revolution team that set that record just three seasons prior (i.e., 2021), when they beat the dignity and/or souls out of them on Decision Day. A lot of the overall success was, again, the ringers paying off – e.g., Messi hovered near the top of the running for both goals and assists (he scored 20 to the 23 Christian Benteke scored for DC United, and set up 16 to Luciano Acosta’s 19 for FC Cincinnati) despite playing just 1,485 minutes all season; new arrival Luis Suarez chipped in with 20 goals and 9 assists of his own, and Jordi Alba added four goals and 14 assists. Some thoroughly capable MLS vets did credible work in keeping them afloat while the ringers rested and generally recovered – see Julian Gressel’s 12 assists and Leo Campana’s...8 goals – and, to their credit, Miami kept a torrid pace throughout the 2024 season. They went three games without a win just twice all season – once in March, then again over the second half of September – and there’s just shitload of Ws on all sides of those and the other stray negative results. Despite all that success, not to mention a +30 goal differential by season’s end, whispers about defensive frailty stalked Miami throughout the season. I didn’t watch them closely enough to confirm or deny those whispers, but Miami’s post-season ended when a theretofore shaky, at best, Atlanta United FC knocked them out over three games in the first round (which, again, doesn’t count in these parts). Apart from raccoons getting loose in a stadium or two, it was the funniest thing that happened all season. And the Raccoons Gone Wild might have happened in prior seasons.
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| I'm doing my part, are you? |
Miami did has done some housecleaning since 2024 ended – e.g., passed on defender Sergii Kryvtsov, shipped (reliable contributor) Diego Gomez to England’s Brighton & Hove Albion, and, perhaps by way of apology, shipped Campana to New England. On the addition side, at least so far, they added a bunch of players I know nothing about – e.g., "attacker" Tadeo Allende, CB/fullback Gonzalo Lujan, Venezuelan midfielder Telasco Segovia. The details in their bios make them look more like depth or signings for the future (the last two are young), and, barring further changes, that leaves Miami riding many of the same aging horses – e.g., Busquets, Alba, Suarez and Messi – and a lot of the same regulars – e.g., Taylor, Gressel, Ryan Sailor(?) – as far as their legs will take them. For what it’s worth, I think Miami’s best shot already came and went and that their window shrunk a little after 2024. For what it’s also worth, I want to see this team fail badly enough to see and believe the things I need to in order to support that theory. With my biases duly entered into the record, I can see Miami saying “Shield be damned” and resting their ringers more often to see if they can’t win the Leagues and MLS Cups.
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