MLS Mix 15: How good are Inter Miami?
The Herons are closing in on an MLS record but still have work to do to make history.
Decision Day is upon us. The 2024 MLS regular season draws to a close this weekend with 14 fixtures played in two bursts. First the Eastern Conference, then the West.
But what is left to play for?
Well, a place in the record books is on the line for Inter Miami, who have set a frightening pace through the first 33 games of the 2024 campaign. If the Herons beat the hapless New England Revolution on Saturday, they will surpass the MLS single-season points record set by a previous, considerably better iteration of the New England Revolution.
That would, in theory, mark the Herons out as one of the best teams seen in MLS. But are they? And is their record-setting Supporters’ Shield performance likely to convert into postseason success and win them the MLS Cup?
Yep. Having sought to avoid over-doing Messi/Inter Miami this year, I’m following up the Messi-for-MVP newsletter with an Inter Miami-for-MLS Cup newsletter. Sorry.
Anyway, here’s how it’s looking in South Florida ahead of the postseason…
Yes, Inter Miami are very good.
Clearly. They are one win away from breaking the MLS points record.
Across the entire regular season Inter Miami have proved to be the most relentless team in the league, and probably in league history. Over the summer they put together an incredible stretch of nine wins in ten games to breeze clear of the competition in the race for the Supporters’ Shield. Most impressively, that run came without Lionel Messi, and partly without Luis Suarez.
And yet it is when Messi and Suarez are in the team that this Miami side find their true rhythm. Suarez’ goals have been a metronomic thump throughout the season. Messi - absent for so long due to injury and international commitments - has let his impact be felt in a series of devastating flurries.
Head coach Tata Martino has navigated the season brilliantly with Messi playing less than 50% of the team’s MLS minutes. As such, Miami’s Supporters’ Shield success is as much a triumph of the ‘others’. The less celebrated, less storied players who could be shining stars at 80% of the teams in MLS. Leonardo Campana, Robert Taylor, Diego Gomez, Federico Redondo. All proven match-winners.
At points in 2024, Inter Miami have been forced to show how good they are without Messi and Suarez. Now, the logic goes, they have the chance to show how great they can be with them.
Have Inter Miami been very, very lucky?
Earlier this month, Columbus Crew defender Rudy Camacho outlined the precise challenge of taking on Inter Miami and Lionel Messi.
"They are clinical. So you have to stay in the game, every second. You have to be focused because it doesn’t take too much. But, when [Messi] touches the ball he can make the difference with an assist or goal. So it’s always special."
In the Columbus-Miami game that followed days later, Messi did nothing for 44 minutes before scoring twice in 180 seconds. Columbus got one back, but Suarez scored within a minute of the restart, snaffling up a loose ball on the edge of the box. Columbus went on to lose the game 3-2. Miami really are clinical.
If you give them chances, Suarez and Messi will score goals. They have both exceeded their expected goals (xG) figure dramatically this season. Suarez has managed 18 goals from an xG of 13.51. Messi’s 17 goals have come from a paltry 9.92 xG. Of course they have. What others may consider a half-chance, Messi sees as a sure thing.
But what’s a little harder to rationalise is the team-wide overperformance in front of goal. Pretty much every Inter Miami goalscorer has found the back of the net more frequently than the numbers suggest that they should. And that’s a worry.
Messi and Suarez are still elite finishers, destined to exceed expectations for the rest of time. But are Ian Fray and Leo Alfonso going to keep this up forever? You’d have to think not.
Incredibly, Inter Miami’s xGD (expected goal difference) for the entire 2024 regular season is -0.6. That means that, across the course of the season, they have given up better chances than they have created.
That is remarkable, considering that they are close to putting together the highest regular season points tally on record. And it’s particularly concerning given this year-old stat from MLS Gone Wild.
That doesn’t even take into account the 2023 playoffs, when LAFC and Columbus Crew met for MLS Cup. Those two finalists had the best xGD records in the regular season last year. More than the points tally, it is the xGD that best predicts the MLS Cup finalists.
As the playoffs approach, can the Herons continue to outperform the numbers?
Will Inter Miami win MLS Cup?
What that question asks, in essence, is whether this is the best MLS team ever assembled. There are other options, of course, but a record regular season point tally combined with an MLS Cup triumph would leave Miami with a very real case for being the greatest.
Last year’s Leagues Cup triumph was amazing, but it felt like a confluence of very particular events. The giddying, candy-pink sugar rush of Lionel Messi’s arrival sustained them for the month-long competition but undoubtedly waned on their return to domestic action.
This year, the Supporters’ Shield victory has shown commendable grit and determination but is also a consequence of their superior attacking talent. Miami have the firepower to blow past most teams, making the most of whatever opportunities come their way. As their xG overperformance attests, they have hit a hot streak and ridden it for much of 2024.
Yet for all those wins, Inter Miami’s breakneck pace has felt strangely precarious. They have only lost four games in MLS this year, but that includes a 6-1 hammering at Cincinnati and a bizarre 4-0 defeat against a mediocre New York Red Bulls. Their Leagues Cup journey was ended by a 3-2 loss to Columbus, a game in which Miami actually took a two-goal lead before collapsing in the second half.
It’s been a season of soaring heights, punctuated by the odd, chasmic low. Throughout the regular season they have managed to keep the plates spinning, able to use that momentum to see off most teams in MLS.
The occasional bad day is always followed by many more good ones, enough to set them ahead of the rest across the course of a 34-game campaign.
The task ahead of them now is to put in five or six top performances against some of the league’s best teams. Teams that have now had a good look at this superstar system, with it’s shining strengths and transparent weaknesses.
In the 29 years of MLS, only eight Supporters’ Shield winners have gone on to lift MLS Cup. The skills required to succeed over the course of the regular season are not the same as those needed to thrive in the high-pressure postseason environment.
Inter Miami are clearly looking to make history. Anything other than success will be viewed as complete, unmitigated failure for the most lavishly assembled team ever seen in US soccer.
As they have been for much of 2024 the Herons head into the postseason walking a tightrope, hoping that the momentum will see them through.