South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Inter Miami CF season preview
New coach Phil Neville is hoping to bring identity, structure and, ultimately, trophies to Inter Miami
After a pandemic-interrupted and ultimately underwhelming inaugural season, South Florida’s MLS team has a new coach, some new players and a new attitude.
It didn’t take Phil Neville long to get comfortable in South Florida after being hired as Inter Miami CF’s coach.
Outside of a brief assistant coaching stint in Valencia CF in Spain, Neville, 44, had mostly lived in his home country of England before joining South Florida’s MLS club in January.
Neville refers to his time with Valencia as “a massive life change.” He learned Spanish while in Spain, which has helped him get better acclimated with both South Florida’s culture and Inter Miami, which has several Spanish-speaking players and employees. Neville only communicates in Spanish to one of the club’s communication department employees.
“It just feels like home,” Neville said. “Every time I drive down I-95 and I come off Commercial Boulevard, it feels like I’ve been here all my life.”
Now that he’s settled in off the field, Neville can fully focus his attention on getting Inter Miami on a trajectory in line with their high ambitions, starting with the team’s sold-out home opener (fans limited to 8,000 in the 18,000-capacity stadium) versus the LA Galaxy on Sunday at DRV PNK Stadium.
“I’ve started to get those little feelings in my belly coming closer to LA Galaxy,” Neville said. “This is why I took the job. The big games are just around the corner. We see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m sure if you speak to any manager in MLS, the break has been a long time for everybody. It’s just time to get the ball out and have some fun.”
“This club wants to win championships and trophies. That’s probably how I want to be measured as well.” — Phil Neville, new Inter Miami CF coach
Many reasons can be cited as to why Inter Miami’s inaugural season wasn’t as successful as they’d hoped: the late hire of Diego Alonso (Neville’s predecessor), the COVID-19 pandemic suspending the season just two days before the team’s original home opener (significantly altering the team’s roster-building plans) and a difficult time regaining their confidence after losing their first five games.
But the team’s lack of a cohesive identity, which is something that multiple players from last year’s team have spoken about, was one of Inter Miami’s most glaring deficiencies. It lead to significant offseason changes and ultimately Neville’s hiring.
“I felt I needed someone to come in and make a change. Something where we wanted to bring the DNA into this club,” said Inter Miami part-owner and president David Beckham, a former teammate of Neville’s on Manchester United and England’s national team — and a long-time friend. “There’s a certain culture that has to run through the academy system, to the USL [team] and into the [MLS] team. Bringing in someone like Phil, I know what he’s like as a personality, coach and human being. He’s trustworthy, loyal and hardworking. We have to indent a DNA that runs through this club.”
When asked what he thought he needed to bring to Inter Miami for this season, Neville answered, “consistency ... consistency in performance [and] consistency in behavior.”
As Neville assessed what went wrong during Inter Miami’s 2020 season, which ended with a 7-13-3 regular-season record and a 3-0 loss to fellow expansion club Nashville SC in the playoff ’s opening round, he saw a team that lacked togetherness.
“You know, you go into a new house with new furniture, sometimes those houses don’t have the feeling of a family home
because you don’t put your own stamp on it. This place is an unbelievable place that needed bringing up to life,” Neville said. “I felt like when I walked in, there was a great foundation, but we needed to make it home and make it where people come in and enjoy themselves.
“They feel so comfortable and smell success, hard work, sweat, blood, tears, and I feel as if that’s what I wanted to do straight away. Systems and tactics are byproducts of those types of values.”
Neville, who was known for his work
ethic as a player, describes himself as a coach who likes for “every minute of every day to be planned,” and the players have already noticed the difference after working with him over the past couple of months.
“The main difference,” forward Gonzalo Higuaín said, “is the coach is a very calm person with clear ideas of how we want to play.”
Midfielder Lewis Morgan described Neville as a “very hands-on coach,” with a coaching staff that is “very detailed and thorough” in its preparation.
“They’re very clear in how they want to play,” Morgan added. “It leaves us players with no doubt in how we want to play when we go onto the field.”
And through that meticulous coaching style, Neville hopes he can provide Inter Miami with the structure the team needs to grow.
“You think about when you have a newborn baby, the quicker you get them into a routine, the better they’ll behave, grow and develop. It’s no different as footballers,” Neville said. “We’re just beginning to walk at this moment in time.”
Neville arrived in South Florida hoping to prove himself, too.
He’s aware of the question marks surrounding his coaching resume. His lone head coaching experience before being hired by Inter Miami was with the England women’s national team from 2018 until earlier this year, meaning he hasn’t been the head coach at the club level until now — leading to questions about how much his relationship with Beckham led to his hire.
There’s also a long history of foreign coaches having a difficult time achieving the same level of success when making the jump to MLS.
“Any job I’ve ever been into, I’ve always had a ‘What is my motivation?’ My motivation is to prove people wrong. Prove I can be successful as a foreign coach in this country.”
Even though most of his focus has been on establishing that identity, Neville knows how often Inter Miami win will ultimately determine how successful his time with the club is viewed.
“This club wants to win championships and trophies,” he said. “That’s probably how I want to be measured as well. Yes, we’ve got a long way to go and a lot of work to do. Ultimately, you don’t go from here to there in the first step. You’ve got to build slowly. We’ve got to make sure we put everything in the right place.
“Success means winning. I’m never shy. I would never be embarrassed to say that winning the league and MLS Cup has got to be our ambition.”