Team addresses links to growing list of international soccer stars
Inter Miami CF’s inaugural Major League Soccer season being on hold hasn’t stopped reports connecting the club with several international soccer stars.
Paul McDonough, Inter Miami COO and sporting director, recently addressed reports linking Real Madrid star James Rodriguez to Inter Miami. On Wednesday, he discussed a player the club itself said it “expected” to acquire before the season was suspended March 12 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
A couple of weeks before the league’s stoppage in play, Inter Miami lead managing owner Jorge Mas said the club had been in conversations for a deal that would land the team Boca Juniors midfielder Agustin Almendra, one of South America’s best young prospects, saying at the time he anticipated a loan for the 20-year-old to be completed “very soon.”
McDonough said during a recent video conference with reporters that the team’s conversations with Boca have been on pause.
“We were trying to get things done,” McDonough said. “We’re just trying to wait and see what happens when we come out of this, what shape everyone’s in, what the appetite is for us to do it and the availability of other players in the market.”
Among the players who may be available that have been linked to Inter Miami is Barcelona midfielder Arturo Vidal, who posted a picture of himself with Inter Miami’s logo in the background on his Instagram account before quickly taking it down. McDonough called the link between Inter Miami and Vidal a rumor.
“He’s a very well established player,” McDonough said. “We get linked with so many players and it hasn’t stopped through the situation. As opportunities and players get presented to us, we continue to address them. Some of them are simply rumors, some of them are interested but they may not line up with our goals or financial valuations. I have to address rumors all the time and it’s great that a lot of people are linked with Miami, but we’re just looking for the right couple of pieces to finish off.”
Another player McDonough addressed that the club has been linked to is Real Madrid forward Gareth Bale, who has recently expressed interest in playing in MLS in the future.
“Gareth Bale has been someone we’ve been linked with and of course he is an exceptional player,” McDonough said. “I just can’t always comment on every rumor whether the rumors are true or not. I can’t do it because I’ll always be answering rumors and it just gets old. A lot of the players we are linked to our exceptional players. We have a couple of roster spots open, so anything that’s good for the club and we think is a good fit for us,
“I just can’t always comment on every rumor whether the rumors are true or not.”
— Paul McDonough, Inter Miami COO
then we’ll have conversations with those people.”
McDonough has reiterated that the team still plans to fill its final two roster slots with a third designated player and a player who’d receive the maximum targeted allocation money.
MLS’s primary transfer window, which was set to run through Tuesday, has been on hold since the league suspended the season, according to MLSsoccer.com. The report says the lost days from the transfer window are expected to be added back when the transfer market is safe to re-open. The secondary transfer window was set to open July 7.