Inter Miami CF 0-0 FC Cincinnati: Patience with the Grind & Exorcised Demons(?)

I hear his screams from beyond...

Does MLS still produce the Instant Replay series, the ones where they take a longer look to decide whether a ref fucked up, or did they retire those along with Simon Borg?

Thinking about that time when DeAndre Yedlin gave himself a cramp by falling into the back of some now-forgotten Inter Miami CF attacker somewhere after the 60th minute. That one quacked like a penalty kick, but Tori Penso didn’t call it and VAR didn’t second-guess her, so what’s the point in picking through the log for that particular piece of corn…

…related, anyone else get the feeling MLS keeps controversial calls/non-calls out of the highlight packages they throw together? Just noticed they didn’t include the late winner they yanked away from Miles Robinson in the full highlights for this one either...guess you bury the bodies where folks can’t find 'em… (To their credit, they did post a whole sidebar video on Robinson's thing.)

Inter Miami CF 0-0 FC Cincinnati
About the Game, Very Briefly
Looked sweaty as balls down in Florida and even Miami’s players looked half-cooked by the 80th minute, but both teams played a lively game in the swamp air. The hosts had the better of the game, but Cincy looked to have the better of the chances – particularly after an unstoned viewing of the highlights – and that captures the way the game played out in as few words as I can manage.

Miami’s high, aggressive defending made it hard for any Cincinnati player ahead of Roman Celentano to play the ball facing forward. Balls into the midfield space went backwards or sideways eight times out of ten and seven balls of ten played forward were long and hopeful. The latter (mostly) kept Miami from turning Cincy over in or around their defensive third (mostly; there were some inevitable miscues), but the Orange and Blue did a lot of defending and passing inside their own half. Miami created more chances – Luis Suarez probably shot and teed up their better ones (e.g., the back-post cross to Fafa Picault, saved by Celentano) – and overlapped around Cincy’s left a couple times, but they had to survive more shots on goal and have decent reason to count themselves a little lucky to escape with a point.

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