Matuidi becomes lone Cup champ in MLS
After years of promising fans an elite player with World Cup and Champions League experience, Inter Miami delivered.
The team announced Thursday morning it had signed dynamic French midfielder Blaise Matuidi, a 2018 World Cup champion, four-time Ligue 1 winner and three-time Serie A winner. The news traveled quickly all over the world, as Matuidi has 5.4 million Instagram followers and is extremely popular in France and
Italy.
He becomes the only World Cup winner currently on a Major League Soccer roster.
Matuidi (pronounced Mah-tu-ee-dee) is moving to Miami after leading
Italian power Juventus to the 2019-20 Serie A title. Juventus, hit hard financially by the COVID-19 pandemic, was looking to unload a few veteran players and agreed to let the 33-year-old out of his contract a year early. He will be reunited with Inter Miami co-owner David Beckham, who was his teammate with Paris SaintGermain in 2013.
“I couldn’t be happier to welcome my friend Blaise to Inter Miami. He is an exciting and gifted player and a great person,” said Beckham, who was said to be instrumental in closing the deal. “To have a World Cup winner of Blaise’s quality in our new team is such a proud moment — for us as owners and for our fans. For me person
Inter Miami signed owner David Beckham’s former teammate Blaise Matuidi, a French World Cup winner who led Juventus to three consecutive Serie A titles and previously starred at Paris Saint-Germain.
“But what you need to understand is nothing really matters what you did last year or the year before that. What matters is what you build today and now and going into the 2020 season. Our focus is really building our skill set now and not really relying on what we’ve done in the past.”
Fine. Let us forget what these two supremely talented players have done in the past. What they did back there is what got them paid.
What they do ahead is what determines if the investment was worthwhile.
For that $157 mil to pay dividends for the Dolphins, Howard and Jones have work to do.
For Howard, the assignment is getting back to being the player who tied for the NFL lead with seven interceptions and made the Pro Bowl in 2018. It also means overcoming knee injury obstacles that limited him to only five starts last season and caused him to start this training camp on the physically unable to perform list.
If Howard, who is currently on the COVID-19 reserve list, returns healthy then Miami’s plan for building an elite secondary has a chance.
“This is a big reason why I was brought here. It was to build on an already good secondary,” Jones said. “We have really good young players, good players who have been here in the past.
“So I’m just another piece to the puzzle in terms of a really good and really excellent Dolphins secondary. Hopefully we’ll have X back. We want to make sure he’s fully healthy first. But, yeah, we’re good. We’re a good team up and down the roster, I’d say.”
While health is Howard’s greatest challenge, Jones must figure out a way to integrate into the Miami defensive style after coming from the Dallas Cowboys and then improve on what he did with the Cowboys.
“In terms of our defensive style, it seems like we’re more man, which is fine,” Jones said. “We have the corners for it. We have the safeties for it. I’m used to being out there guarding receivers, tight ends, slot receivers, Xs and Zs, so it’s nothing different per se.
It’s just a different roster, a different system.
“It’s exciting but definitely new.”
And it needs honing, refining, tuning.
“He’s a smart player. He’s a tough player. I think he can tackle, he’s got good cover skills, he’s got length, he’s got some leadership qualities,” coach Brian Flores said of Jones. “... Obviously there are some improvements he can make to his game like all players and like all coaches.
“He’s got to make some improvements. We all have to make some improvements. I know he’ll work towards that.”
Jones says the work is already underway. He’s trying to improve his ball skills so that when the football is in the air, his chance of intercepting it are as good as the receiver’s chance of catching it.
It’s a skill Jones admires in Howard. And it’s a necessary skill if Jones is going to start collecting some interceptions after not having any the past two seasons.
“Like any skill set, you work on it on a daily basis,” Jones said. “When there’s a special teams period, I go with [coaching assistant Charles Burks]. We go off to the side and work on seeing the ball in all the way. And then we work on high-pointing the ball when the ball’s in the air.
“We work on looking back, looking over the opposite shoulder. We make the drills uncomfortable so that when it happens in the game, it’s natural at that point. So it’s just a skill set like anything else — eyes, hands, feet. It’s a skill set I’m working on and every day we’re doing something to improve in that category.”
Improve Jones’s skill set, improve Howard’s health and durability, and the Dolphins might have something worth their $157 million cornerback investment.
They might in fact have the NFL’s best cornerback tandem.