In a game that had already seen two goals and a red card, it was a goalline clearance in the 76th minute that spoke as the clearest statement of Inter Miami’s intent for the remainder of the 2024 MLS season.
Hosting fellow Eastern Conference contenders FC Cincinnati at Chase Stadium, Miami raced into an early two-goal lead thanks to a Luis Suárez brace. Twice Tata Martino’s side pounced on careless turnovers by the visitors inside the first six minutes, and twice the veteran Uruguayan striker finished ruthlessly inside the penalty area.
But then as half-time drew near, 20-year-old central defender Tomás Avilés showed his inexperience, being sent off for a second yellow card after a reckless challenge near midfield that was worthy of a straight red.
Miami were already without the injured Lionel Messi for the eighth consecutive MLS game. Up against the reigning Supports’ Shield champions and, after the addition of MVP candidate Luciano Acosta at the mid-season break, 10-man Inter might have crumbled. After all, they were facing one of the few attacking units in MLS that can equal their creativity and firepower. But the action of another defender in pink epitomised their commitment to clinging on.
Related: Lionel Messi pledges future to Miami and admits there is ‘not a lot of time left’
Paraguayan center-back David Martínez was making his MLS debut after arriving on loan from River Plate in July. Despite being such a recent recruit, the 26-year-old showed he was reading from the same playbook as his new colleagues – who’d pressed doggedly to unsettle the Cincy players in possession – when he raced back to clear a goal-bound effort from inside the six-yard box.
Martínez’s intervention helped preserve a clean sheet and three points for Miami, clinching a playoff berth in the process. But they achieved much more beyond that, too.
Through a combination of international duty and an ankle injury sustained in Argentina’s Copa América final victory over Colombia, Miami have been without Messi since 2 June. Of the eight MLS games Messi has missed in that time, Inter have now won seven, finding a way to win without their most talented and most important player.
The only game Inter lost over that stretch was an embarrassing 6-1 defeat to Cincinnati last month. Suarez and Jordi Alba were both absent for that one, too, while Sergio…