By Joiner Martínez
Sep 27, 2024, 9:50 PM EDT
The Argentine coach of Inter Miami, Gerardo Martino, spoke to the media prior to his match this Saturday, September 28 at the Chase Stadium, and highlighted the performance of his defense and how Leo Messi is doing after having overcome his ankle injury.
“What I think is that Leo (Messi) is going to get better and better as he adds 90 minutes. Obviously Leo does not need to do differentiated physical work in a training session, but rather a competition rhythm every 90 minutes, which gives me the idea that he will reach the playoffs very well, because in addition to the matches with us, he has the national team matches. . So we have a lot of hope that he will arrive in very good shape for the playoffs,” Tata commented regarding his team captain.
“For 7 or 8 games we maintained a 4-3-3, we modified it to 4-4-2, so that already implies a certain rearrangement and the team had good passages and bad passages, we have not been able to maintain the regularity that we had achieved “But it’s a matter of training to be able to achieve it,” he added about how the tactical setup has had to change with the absence of Messi.
“When you see that Diego, Luis, Leo are back, we are practically like we are starting again, everything that happened during the Copa América and that spread a little during Leo’s injury, it was a team, when everyone was cured it was putting together another team over the competition, and we are adjusting to that, everything requires rearrangement,” he added.
And he added about the team’s defense: “The issue is that we now have David injured, but we have had a very good response from both Noah and Ian, who have played in that position. Ian and Serhiy, who I think never played as a centre-back pair, did very well in Atlanta, we have had a very good response. When we analyze Busquets as a center back, I cannot analyze it in isolation, because his presence as a center back indicates that Yannick is within the team and that is where we make an assessment that we put into analysis every time we play a game.”
Inter Miami has not lost a game since last August 13 when it lost 3-2 on its visit to the Columbus Crew, one of the most powerful teams in the United States League, in a commitment to the League Cup and since then the of Florida have increasingly gained more confidence to face the final stretch of the MLS.
Inter Miami, leader of the MLS East, has already qualified for the postseason and is on its way to winning the Supporters’ Shield for the best team in the regular season.
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