Inter Miami looks move into driver’s seat in playoff race
The stakes for Inter Miami CF in their match against the Montreal Impact Saturday at Red Bull Arena are clear: win and they’re momentarily in the driver’s seat for a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference standings.
Inter Miami (5-10-3, 18 points) sit just outside the playoff standings at 12th place in the 14-team East with five games left in the season.
The top 10 teams in the conference make the playoffs.
The Chicago Fire FC (5-84, 19 points) are the only team above Inter Miami among teams on the outside looking in the playoff standings.
FC Cincinnati (4-10-4, 16 points) and D.C. United (2-10-6, 12 points) are the only teams below Miami in the conference standings.
An Inter Miami victory on Saturday would place them above the playoff line for the first time this season, with 10th-place Atlanta United FC (5-9-4, 19 points), 9th-place Montreal (6-10-2, 20 points) and 8th-place Nashville SC (5-6-6, 21 points) all within striking distance depending on the results of their upcoming matches.
“The games are running out,” midfielder Lewis Morgan said. “Every single game is important, starting with the game we got [Saturday] against a direct rival. We need to try and take as many points as possible. There are probably six or seven teams fighting trying to get in [the playoffs], so we know everyone’s going to be pushing
and we need to make sure we’re doing our best to take as many points as we can.”
Inter Miami are coming off a 1-1 draw to Atlanta United on Wednesday, with Miami walking away from the match with a single point despite outshooting (21-3) Atlanta by a significant margin and dominating most of the game.
“One thing we can take
from the recent games is that we are creating so many more chances,” Morgan said. “Creating 21 to three chances, usually you’d say ‘that must team must have won.’ One thing I will say is credit to Atlanta for the way they were putting bodies in the line. It wasn’t that we were missing clear cut chances — they defended well.”
Inter Miami coach Diego Alonso agreed with Morgan’s assessment.
“What we saw from the team was that we were able to generate and create many opportunities and also we were able to limit the opponent with their chances,” Alonso said. “We were able to see in the second half how we play with more depth, how we attack stronger, we used the spaces and we attacked in one-on-one opportunities.”
Alonso added that the team needs to be more aggressive against opposing team’s backlines, with only six of Inter Miami’s 21 shots against Atlanta being on target.
Rodolfo Pizarro rejoining Inter Miami soon should help the team with creating better scoring chances. Alonso said he expects the Mexican midfielder to play against Orlando City SC on Oct. 24 after missing the team’s last three games due to playing in friendlies in the Netherlands for Mexico’s national team.
Pizarro will miss Saturday’s game due to Major League Soccer’s COVID19 mandatory quarantine protocol.
Inter Miami’s most pressing concern is their tendency to allow opponents to score shortly after they do, which happened when Atlanta tied the game just three minutes after Inter Miami scored their first goal.
Multiple players have said the team needs to be better focused throughout the entire match and not become lax to prevent these lapses.
“One of the main things we spoke about is it’s going to be hard to break teams down and no team is going to be an easy win here,” Morgan said. “When we do go up 1-0, it’s important that we see that game out. We need to look at is the flipside of it — why did we concede the goal?
“With the players we have, I’m sure we’ll score goals. It’s about how we can keep it tight on the other end.”