A Look At Pre-Messi Inter Miami

Firstly, let’s take a look at how Messi matches up with some of the best players in MLS, and as you can see from the graphic below, he’s one of the best in the league, matching up closely with the likes of Thiago Almada, Riqui Puig, and Carles Gil. Now, looking at Messi’s current Inter Miami teammates, Leo Campana represents the most threat going forward, but even then his score is relatively low. Kamal Miller and Sergii Kryvstov are solid centerbacks, but a lot of their goals added comes from preventing goals, not scoring them. That’s not what you want to see at the top of the list. Negri and Robert Taylor are interesting players, but for me, their nothing really more than good role players, but that shot from Robert Taylor a few days ago, sheeesh. Josef Martinez has yet to hit as a signing, but Messi’s arrival should help him receive quality service and possibly take some of the focus on him in the final third (he looked really good in his first game with Messi). And for possibly the most interesting graph, you can see some of Inter Miami’s deficiencies going forward as they have been very poor in the half spaces between the opposing midfield and defensive lines, but this is the exact spot where Messi likes to operate. Additionally, the arrival of Jordi Alba as a left-back should enable DeAndre Yedlin to shift to his preferred right back position and that could shore up some of the holes going forward on the right side of the pitch. And it will be interesting to see how much the new arrivals of Busquets and Diego Gomez can help the midfield of Miami, because Cremaschi and Ruiz aren’t going to cut it for this season.