Getting Reacquainted with Inter Miami CF, the Very Bestest, Special Boys of MLS

Fuck Lays on so, so many levels.

Thumbnail History
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

FC Cincinnati 3-1 Inter Miami FC: Shit, I Underwrote My Theme...

Junior Moreno, artist's rendering.

Here I’ve been posting twitter threads that double as game summaries since the pandemic started (at least) and I never thought to just link to the fucking things. In fairness, that’s more color commentary than summary - and the notes come at what I consider appropriate intervals (i.e., I’m very much a one-dude-in-the-broadcast-booth man) - but it flags every goal, notes some broader trends and even mentions the shirtless dude in the crowd with the great state of Ohio tattooed on the skin above his beating heart.

Now, to flesh that out a little…or a lot.

FC Cincinnati started the game as well as Inter Miami CF started it badly. They stopped everything headed toward their goal before it breached their defensive third - if with a massive assist from a globally sloppy Miami team - and piled on pressure with sharp passes and a selection of first touches and shake-‘n’-shimmies that kept the ball rolling toward Miami’s goal. Whether on coach’s orders or from a bout of the jitters, the visitors let Cincy play, only really trying to pressure the ball when it rolled into their defensive third. With the home team more or less camped inside Miami’s half, that proved disastrous: Cincinnati generally only had to go as far back as the impressively effective Yuya Kubo (who added a wrinkle with a shot on goal!) and Cincy’s new stealth-fighter No. 6, Junior Moreno, who would then feed it either to Luciano Acosta, one of the forwards (Brandon Vazquez or Dominique Badji), or Alvas Powell high on the right, or Ronald Matarrita high on the left.

Given how mightily Miami struggles to score - they’ve scored just two goals over four(!?) games, with one coming from the spot (today) - Cincy effectively won the game over the first 25 minutes. Their first goal featured a lot some of the good, good things I noted above - e.g., Badji showing to receive the ball, but instead turning and letting the ball run toward goal, poking it to Acosta, who found a wide-open (this is a theme) Vazquez running up Cincy’s right. With the fullback playing to contain, Vazquez pulled up, stepped inside and scanned for the third pass, who happened to be Matarrita, who passed home the goal from the far post. Miami’s shape was a disaster, both d-mids had stepped to Badji, leaving Acosta free to run with space in front of him and Vazquez all alone.

Cincy’s second goal followed the other half of the script noted above. After making a pinned-in Miami chase around the right for a couple passes, the ball went back to Kubo, who cycled the ball to Tyler Blackett (yeah, yeah, the ball went further back), who found - again, a wide-open Matarrita, who was able to pick out Vazquez as cleanly as the latter had done for the former just six minutes earlier. In short, a low-scoring Inter Miami found themselves down 0-2 by letting too much happen around them. They showed too much respect to one of MLS’s historically bad sides.