Gerardo Martinocoach of Inter Miamirecognized this Saturday that the 2024 season of the team led by Lionel Messi ended in failure after their surprising elimination against Atlanta United in the first round of the MLS playoff. “The season is not a success when you are eliminated in the quarterfinals (of the East in the MLS),” he said in a press conference.
“It’s had good things, it’s had bad things. If you think about where we were in November last year, obviously there is progress in terms of the club, not just the team. If you think about the expectations we had for this ‘ playoff’, obviously we have fallen too short,” he added.
Inter Miami suffered a resounding setback this Saturday, losing 2-3 against Atlanta United and being eliminated 1-2 in this best-of-three series. The team of Messi, Luis Suárez, Jordi Alba and Sergio Busquets won the MLS Supporters’ Shield this year (trophy for the best team in the regular season) and broke the record for points in the league with 74.
Suárez, the living image of Inter Miami’s impotence
But he said goodbye at the first opportunity in the MLS Cup qualifiers against an Atlanta United that was ninth in the East in the regular season with only 40 points, which entered the playoff as eighth through the wild card and which is in the process of rebuilding with an interim coach (Rob Valentino).
“The game, in general terms, I think we justified throughout the game having been able to win. Even with the runs that Atlanta had, we had a significant number of goal situations, we ended up playing very close to the Atlanta area,” he argued Martino. The coach stressed that the players were “bad” and sad” in the locker room after this unexpected and enormous disappointment.
“As it should be, as it should be when there are so many expectations and the team cannot meet them. In this last part of the year we get used to achieving the objectives that we set for ourselves and we have not been able to achieve the most important one,” he said. .
Two plays that the coach questions
On the other hand, the Argentine coach criticized two “debatable at least” decisions by the referee: a penalty that in his opinion occurred in the first half for a handball in the visiting area and Atlanta United’s third goal, which came in a play in the that Tomás Avilés, from Inter Miami, was on the ground complaining of physical problems.
“I am referring to a play quite similar to the second game, at Atlanta’s home, where Fede (Redondo) cuts and attacks and there is a player, I think Ajani Fortune, lying on the floor and Luis Suárez makes him stop and we get the ball out. But that’s what we would do and what we did,” he also noted, criticizing Atlanta United’s performance.
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Asked if this elimination is even harder considering that Messi is 37 years old and may not have much more time left in the league, Martino clarified that there is nothing certain about it. “I actually don’t know how limited Messi’s time is in the MLS. There is a question of the passage of time, which is already clear, but I wouldn’t dare say that it is so short either,” he said. “I think there is no reason for the club not to continue trying next year. Everything that has happened this year, the bad and the good, has been generally better than everything that happened last year and I would say that even from the life that the club has,” he pointed out.
