A Lionel Messi with a discouraged aspect left the field on Wednesday after his inter Miami team was categorically exhibited by a young Whitecaps from Vancouver. The 3-1 defeat in the second stage of his semi-final of the Concacaf Champions Cup meant a 5-1 global defeat against the Canadian team and no one who watched the matches would wonder if the score was a simple reflection of the matches. A team of Miami built around Messi and a multitude of former aging teammates from its peak in Barcelona – Luis Suarez, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba – mainly supported by South American companions players, have shown their age against a Whitecaps team which was faster and clearer in all regions.
Last year, Miami won the supporters’ shield – for the best record of the regular season in MLS, with a record campaign, but the attempt to tighten another year on the tiring legs of the old boys in Barça turned out to be a mistake.
Suarez, 38, who, like Messi, scored 20 goals in MLS last year, now seems completely spent, his legs are no longer able to put him in the positions that his experience tells him that he must be.
Busquets is a desolate shadow of the exceptional midfielder he was in the past and Alba, although an offensive threat, seems to have been authorized to ignore his defensive tasks.
And although Messi is always well capable of providing moments of reflections of highlighting, he is 37 years old and surely needs will and hunger, young people ready to run all day for him and not the good company of his elderly friends in the same way.
Coach Javier Mascherano, another old Barça teammate who also played with Messi in the Argentine national team, amplified the problems by leaving the younger and local options on the bench and the Whitecaps have joyfully accepted the space left on the ground.
‘They cannot run, cannot defend’
“Vancouver has shown Inter Miami’s weaknesses. Because they cannot run, they cannot defend, and there is no balance in the team. Because five remain at the front and the other five try to defend. And they cannot defend,” said television expert Fox Warren Barton, former Prime League defender.
Danish coach of Vancouver, Jasper Sorensen, was a diplomatic in his post-match analysis, but there were frankly moments that revealed the painful truth for Mascherano and Messi.
“I think it’s just to say that we have a younger team and a team not capable of running and playing with high intensity,” he said.
“I think we really came out very strong at the beginning of the second half and used that the field was very open, they had players who stayed at the front, so we had to defend with a few guys and I just said” continue to run, run forward … “.
Miami had players who stayed at the front, not working to help in the midfield and it is an approach that simply does not work against a high energy side like Whitecaps.
Mascherano said he was now focusing on the MLS national campaign and did not even think of the World Cup of the FIFA club in June.
But this challenge will soon be in Miami, who will open the tournament on world television against the Egyptian side Al Ahly before facing the Portuguese giants Porto and the Brazilians Palmeiras.
If they reproduce the performances produced during their two games against Whitecaps, Miami risks being embarrassed on the world scene.
And for MLS, a league that worked so hard to lose its reputation as a “retirement home” for the old stars of European clubs, there is an obvious danger in their deepest club which seems too old to follow.
The Messi moment was supposed to pass the MLS to the next level – now there is the danger that the bad recruitment choices of Miami really remove the real progress that occurs on the ground, so well demonstrated Wednesday by the Whitecaps.
(This story has not been published by NDTV staff and is automatically generated from a unionized flow.)
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