2023-10-09 19:27:22
Tata Martino in a match with Inter Miami on September 27. (Hector Vivas/Getty Images)
Gerardo Tata Martino has added a new failure to his recent resume. The technical director of Inter Miami was unable to modify the club’s inertia and was left with no mathematical options to access the playoffs. The defeat against Cincinnati FC (1-0) last Saturday left Lionel Messi’s team out of the fight for the league title. Major League Soccer (MLS). This is a painfully missed opportunity, after the improvement seen in the last couple of months. QBut, precisely, that progress was due to the presence of Messi, and not to that of Martino.
After his turbulent time with the Mexican National Team, which resulted in an elimination in the group stage at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, Martino received an ideal opportunity to restore his prestige as an elite coach. But that idea began to fade since his debut, when he lost 3-0 against the surprising St. Louis City. Everything was made up with Messi’s debut, six days later, and a streak of victories that culminated with the crowning of the Leagues Cup and runner-up in the US Open Cup.
However, the rise in spirits was artificial and completely attributable to Messi. Without him on the field, Inter Miami found no answers on the bench, with Martino completely overwhelmed by the need to fight against the clock for a place in the playoffs. And that dependence was evidenced in the worst way only in the first game that Inter Miami played without Messi, on September 16, when they lost 5-2 against Atlanta United (a team that a month before, in the Leagues Cup and with Messi, they had overwhelmed 4-0).
It was not unusual to see Inter Miami suffer this transformation in the absence of Messi. The most worrying thing was that from the bench there were no necessary solutions to avoid such an announced collapse. —and in the end they couldn’t even with him—. Martino took office at the end of June and began serving in mid-July. For almost three months, he could not generate the necessary mechanisms in the team to know how to work without Messi. And there was no shortage of tools. Reinforcements arrived to straighten the path and, at the very least, not be eliminated so early.
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Martino had, above all, great credit when he arrived in the MLS: He knew the league perfectly and had been champion, in 2018, with Atlanta. There were many scenarios similar to that first experience. When he arrived in the MLS for the first time, in 2017, Martino had just resigned from the Argentine National Team, after months of great tension at the federative level – his results were not the trigger, as he had lost two Copa América finals, but his team He had a defined style.
In the two years he led Atlanta, a debuting franchise, Martino led a fresh, attractive team that showed fearless and offensive football. In his first year, he finished in fourth place and was eliminated in the quarterfinals of the Eastern Conference. The following year, they had no rival. They had a solid regular season, which left them in second place in the conference and they far surpassed all their playoff rivals until they were crowned champions. That second wind as a coach was, precisely, the key that opened the door to the Mexican National Team for Martino. He seemed to have redeemed himself in the MLS, although later his time in Mexico was anything but peaceful.
And the process seemed to repeat itself now. An eventful passage through a national team and a return to the MLS to establish himself again as a high-flying technical director. It could not be. Messidependencia won the fight against Martino and his abilities. The alibi that he did not start the tournament still works for him — although his hand has not generated radical changes to those seen with Neville and Morales, Miami’s other coaches during 2023. Now will come the planning for the year 2024, in which there will be no excuses of any kind. Martino has before him a train that will never pass again.
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