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| Not shit. I just love the painting. |
[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]
Thumbnail History
I came this close to lumping the Miami Fusion into this post. They joined in the same pre-contraction expansion as the Chicago Fire, only, when contraction did come after the 2002 season, the league opted to keep Chicago and cut Florida loose…which continues to be a temptation, of course. I decided against for one obvious reason: the 1998-2002 team doesn’t have so much as a sparkle of the glitz and glamour of Inter Miami CF. The temptation lingered for a while, due mostly the fact that MLS legends like Kyle Beckerman, Pablo Mastroeni, Nick Rimando and (pushing it here) Jay Heaps, but the Fusion really did play and thrive in a totally different league…
…and yet, is that so different than the gap that separates Inter Miami’s MLS 4.0(?) Year and the Messi marketing cash-grab that so recently pissed off Hong Kong fans? My short response is no and yes, and in that order. The 2020 team went so rules-breaking big on its first roster-build that it forced the league to sanction it for playing a shell-game in terms of roster compliance. Miami still made the 2020 playoffs, but that comes with a couple caveats – e.g., the playoff pool was out-of-control-house-party big that season (because COVID) and the sanctions arguably derailed Miami’s 2021 season. They rode the death-rattle of Gonzalo Higuain’s career to get back to the playoffs in 2022 and I briefly became obsessed with Miami at the beginning of 2023 when they started strong on the back of sterling midfield performances from Gregore and Jean Mota. Gregore went down for most (if not all) of the season by the third game and Mota succumbed to an injury of his own somewhere around the 10th game, all of which caused Miami’s cruel summer to arrive ahead of schedule. Two months of eating shit followed: they went winless from the middle of May to the middle July, losing eight games of 11 and looking very, very doomed. And then came the Leagues Cup. And the arrival of Lionel Messi, Sergio Busquets, Jordi Alba, and…Robert Taylor. That all-star cast and a new director (they bumped now-Portland Timbers head coach, Phil Neville, for Tata Martino) lead them to the inaugural Leagues Cup title. They could not, however, climb out of the hole the former team dug over those two months of eating shit…well, that and the six-game losing streak that happened earlier that season after Gregore’s injury threw Plan A into chaos.
Best Season(s)
I’m calling it a toss-up. I imagine that winning the Leagues Cup was nice and all, but failing to make the 2023 playoffs must have been like chasing a shot of delicious Jameson with something disgusting and fucking weird like pickle juice (just…don’t). Given that, I’m going with Gonzalo Higuain’s rousing curtain-call at the end of 2022. Just feels more heroic.
