The names just keep rolling in for Inter Miami.
When Lionel Messi joined the club midway through the 2023 MLS season, Miami quickly added Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba – two of Messi’s teammates from his time at Barcelona. Then, just before the new year, Inter Miami added another former Barcelona player to their squad in the form of striker Luis Suárez.
The La Liga exiles are congregating in south Florida, but they’re not the only ones heading for Miami. Wide playmaker Julian Gressel, who has made a handful of appearances for the US men’s national team and is a two-time MLS Cup winner, is also heading to Inter Miami. The club also appears to be after talent from Boca Juniors and other big clubs in South America.
Many are feeling optimistic about Miami ahead of the new MLS season. After Tata Martino’s team lifted the Leagues Cup in 2023, why shouldn’t they be? They’ll clearly be among the league’s top teams in 2024, with a double or even a treble within reach. But while a successful 2024, involving more hardware than last year, is possible, it’s also not guaranteed for Inter Miami.
It doesn’t matter if you’re Inter Miami or any other club vying to dominate their region, you’re always forced to contend with a sort of push-and-pull when you try to build a super team: the world’s most valuable attacking players love, well, to attack … and so rarely want to defend.
It’s no surprise that when Messi and Friends moved to Florida, Miami struggled without the ball.
Now, they weren’t awful defensively. Super teams – and Inter Miami are no exception here – do just about everything they can to keep the ball and avoid having to sit deep inside their own half. That way, their superstars have as many chances as possible to, well, be superstars. But even the best teams in the world relative to their competition don’t have possession for anything close to 100% of every game.
So what happens when they lose it?
This is where the biggest teams in Europe have a big advantage over their competition that Miami lack over theirs. Teams like PSG and Real Madrid, ones that play with a bunch of uber-talented attackers, also tend to have uber-talented defenders.
During his time at Barcelona and PSG, Messi played with a collection of the best defenders of all time. He, and the rest of Inter Miami’s upper-class attackers, don’t have that luxury in MLS. With the league’s rules designed to promote competitive balance by capping spending on most roster spots, Miami can only allocate so many resources to defensive positions while shelling out for Messi, Suárez and others.
So Inter Miami’s roster includes a handful of players who are too good to defend. It also includes many other lesser players in key positions who will be exposed against high-level opposing attackers.
Looking back to last year, they were a below average defensive team during the final stretch of the regular season with Messi and Co in the squad. According to American Soccer Analysis, Miami were ranked 19th out of MLS’s 29 teams in expected goals allowed a game (1.43) and 16th in goals allowed a game (1.42) over their final 12 matches.
In 2024, they’ll continue to have defensive issues. And they’ll have them at both ends.
Starting at the front – the great Johan Cruyff referred to his striker as his “first defender” – Inter Miami’s defensive shape was often broken towards the end of last year. Messi doesn’t tend to engage outside of a quick push immediately after losing the ball. Adding Suárez, who will be 37 by the time the new season kicks off, into their frontline won’t help shore up their defensive work. For much of this year, Miami will be playing without a first defender (or a second).
It’s easy to imagine big moments in 2024 where opposing teams brush past the top of Inter Miami’s defensive shape, overload the remaining outfield players, and break towards goal. It’s easy to imagine because it happened plenty in 2023.
Here’s just one example from last year’s Leagues Cup, a competition between MLS and Liga MX teams, when Miami played Cruz Azul:
Cruz Azul were able to move the ball between seamlessly between Miami’s defensive line while Inter’s forward partnership, including Messi, stood around and watched:
Shifting to the backline, Miami’s current first-choice defense is entirely built of players who are either older than 30 or younger than 20. Gressel and DeAndre Yedlin, who will both likely see time at right back, are 30. At left back, Jordi Alba is 34. At center back, Ukrainian Serhiy Kryvtsov is 32, while Tomás Avilés is just 19. Toss in Busquets, a 35-year-old defensive midfielder, and you’ve got a lot of miles on those legs. Or, in the case of Avilés, not enough.
Inter Miami already know they’ll struggle without the ball in 2024. They accepted that the moment they landed Messi. The implicit bet the club is making this year, though, is that their defensive issues just won’t matter. Their attack will be so good, the bet dictates, that they’ll score two goals for every one they allow.
Somewhat curiously, Inter Miami’s attack wasn’t elite last year after the reinforcements arrived. They were 10th in goals a game (1.58) and 12th in xG a game (1.47) in the regular season after their roster overhaul, per ASA. To be fair, half of those games were without Messi, though there was no major distinction with our without him in the lineup. A full preseason and an even stronger attacking group should turn a good attack into a great one.
With a roster full of young, healthy elite players competing without a Copá America-sized gap squarely in the middle of the season, betting on the attack to make up for their own defensive vulnerabilities would seem safe enough. But Inter Miami don’t have that roster, nor do they have the luxury of playing in a league that aligns itself with the calendar of the international game.
The Copá America, which runs from 20 June to 14 July, will probably see Miami play without Messi for more than a fifth of their regular season schedule if Argentina make a run to the final. Inter Miami have seven games either in or right around those tournament dates. The Paris Olympics, with its men’s soccer tournament running from 24 July to 10 August, could also see Miami lose multiple players during the Leagues Cup.
Between those two international tournaments, Inter Miami’s chances to win the Supporters’ Shield as the best regular season team in MLS and their hopes of repeating their Leagues Cup title drop. They don’t drop nearly to zero. But they do drop.
Miami’s margin for error is more narrow than many think, despite assembling top players in a region where it’s easy to stand out. It seems foolish to pick against them to win a trophy this year, especially not with five there for the taking – if MLS teams do indeed play in the US Open Cup. But collecting a few trophies to match sky-high expectations? With obvious defensive frailties and real player availability issues lurking in the background, that’s no simple task.
Even the biggest club in MLS isn’t immune to disappointment.
