2024 has been a year to remember for Inter Miami.
The Herons sealed a spot into the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup following Saturday’s 6-2 win over the New England Revolution. After capturing a first-ever Supporters’ Shield, Inter Miami will now prepare for the MLS Cup Playoffs as the Eastern Conference’s No. 1 seed.
Tata Martino’s men became the 31st of 32 overall teams to qualify for the competition, which will take place on U.S. soil next year.
In addition to clinching a Club World Cup berth, the Herons also made MLS history on Saturday with their home victory. Their 74 points earned in the regular season surpassed the league’s previous points record, which was broken by the Revolution in 2021.
Led by international stars Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez, Sergio Busquets, and Jordi Alba, the Herons will be favored to make a deep playoff run in the coming weeks.
“We all know how Miami is in love with football and how Inter Miami is supported from across Florida and beyond for your exciting brand of football,” said FIFA President Gianni Infantino. “Congratulations on your wonderful 2024 Supporters’ Shield success. You have shown that in the United States, you are consistently the best club on the field of play.
“Therefore, I am proud to announce that as one of the best clubs in the world, you are deserved participants in the new FIFA Club World Cup 2025 as the host club representing the United States.”
The Herons will also kick off the Club World Cup by hosting the first match of the tournament. The competition will feature many of the world’s best clubs including Manchester City, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Chelsea, and more.
Inter Miami will be joined by the Seattle Sounders as the two MLS representatives.
Pfft. There were only seventeen passes in that sequence. Why, I remember Arsenal under Arsene Wagner once having a sequence that had 21. 😉
Seriously, though, there is just so much confidence on that team right now; they have obviously all completely bought in and their collective level of execution is something I’ve never seen in MLS before Wilfried Nancy. It’s very clear Nancy evaluates and develops players his own way, too, because for the most part that’s as nondescript a bunch of players as you’ll see in MLS these days aside from Cucho and Rossi. Like I think I’ve mentioned before, I would kill to just watch Nancy coach for even a couple hours and be allowed to pick his brain a bit. All respect to Tata, who is undeniably accomplished, I don’t know if we’ve ever had an elite coach quite at Nancy’s level before who you could look at and say: “I could legit see that guy coaching a team that wins the Champions League someday, he’s that good.”
I do wonder if he’ll get the opportunity, though. Opta may have finally caught on – Opta has MLS as the #9 league in the world right now, ahead of the Eredivisie, the Championship, Liga MX, and the Turkish Superliga, which I personally still think is a place or two low (I mean, Belgium, really?) – but collective disdain for all things MLS is sort of embedded in European soccer DNA, so it may not matter to them how good Nancy is. MLS is MLS, they say, a pub league for aging has-beens, and as a player he never played past Ligue 2 in France. And that still does seem to matter to them more than it should. Selfishly, that wouldn’t break my heart; I love watching the Crew play under him and I’d be happy to watch him coach in MLS forever.
I also still insist DuJuan Jones is maybe as good as the third-best fullback and very likely the most criminally underrated player in the US pool. I’m going to be very interested to see what he looks like as Nancy puts some polish on him and it starts getting as reflexive for Jones as it is the rest of that Crew roster.
(Apologies, this was supposed to be a response to JR below.)
You certainly wouldn’t count Derrick Jones, Sean Zawadzki, Christian Ramirez, Max Arfsten, Mo Farsi, or Aiden Morris as big possession guys before Nancy but he has turned all of those guys into confident and poised players in possession. I’m not sure if you noticed but that’s a CB bursting behind the backline on that goal! That being said they blew a 2-0 to NYRB and needed an added time strike from another CB to win so, we ain’t perfect by any means.
At least three of those goals were just filthy and left me shaking my head…that last one might have been the best team goal I’ve ever seen pulled off in MLS. The bewildered Revs players were just standing there with these: “What am I even supposed to do with that?” looks on their faces. Not sure I’d know what to tell them either.
Give Suarez and Messi their due. The guys are still on another planet, skillwise. Miami’s going to be a beast to try to handle in the playoffs and I would absolutely not want those guys in my Club World Cup group next year, especially having to play them at home.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlVJB1gYeSg
I think they’ll probably win it all, but they were always going to get the automatic birth. No matter what FIFA needs as many viewers and ticket buyers as possible for their event. The Crew did come from behind and beat them in Leagues Cup (without Messi), after the first round it only takes one lucky or unlucky game and Inter could be out. Any of those Euro teams if they put out a first team will crush them though. Of course Miami will have the winter to further boost their roster and having this spot will make it easier to bring in more young SA stars and/or Messi buddies.
Win MLS Cup not Club World Cup if that was confusing.
Confusing the Revs’ defense this year is… not exactly something to write home about. Columbus put a combined 9 past them. Philly did them for 8. Miami could certainly win this, but I’d be worried about their defense having to hold up against a sequence of good offenses backed by much better defenses. The Revs did score twice and actually underperformed their xg (thanks Vrioni). Unless they really strengthen that part of the team, the CWC will look just like the CCC for them.
they were pretty cruddy all year. Disappointing under Caleb Porter
That Porter made it to the end of the season as the manager is pretty surprising. They had a decent June and July, but they were awful to start and awful at the finish. 8 times in mls they have up 4+ goals, not counting the 5 and 4 they gave Club America in CL.
JR, it’s not that surprising that Porter made it to the end of the year, or even that he’s the one person guaranteed to be back next year, if you know how much the Krafts actually care about the team and how unwilling they are to admit when get things wrong.
True, and I can see somebody like, say, Columbus jumping on them early and then playing keepaway until they run out the clock. Hard for Messi and Suarez to kill you if they never get to touch the ball, and those guys are not exactly pressing machines at this stage of their careers…Messi literally spends most of the game just sort of strolling around the field most of the game. Strange as it may seem, Houston’s probably another team they don’t match up well against though Miami wouldn’t see them until the final. So there will be some…challenges, along the way, and I wouldn’t hand them the MLS Cup just yet either.
But that last goal…my God. You don’t see that every day. Or even every year. Those guys still can pull out some skill very few teams on the planet could even aspire to.
Nk: I actually had started typing a line about it was probably because the Krafts didn’t want to be paying both Arena and Caleb not to coach. Is the new stadium deal off?
JR, as of now, yes. Everett still want it. But there are various rumors of the ways the Krafts have pissed off Mayor Wu in interesting new ways to how they pissed off Mayor Menino.
Q: if you liked the Miami goal, check out this one from Columbus
https://x.com/tombogert/status/1847768508605878361?s=46&t=wTK_6FPzNDzRs_U7n_Stlg
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Charlotte is a tough semi matchup for Miami 3-2 season aggregate. Cincinnati won the season series with The Crew 2-1, winning at Lower.com Field.