Inter Miami drops to second place in MLS after 6-1 rout by Cincinnati. Busquets ejected

Inter Miami coach Tata Martino has enough MLS experience to know that a July game, no matter how much it is hyped, is not truly critical in a season that lasts until November.

“There is a long season ahead of us, everything doesn’t begin and end with this game,” Martino said on the eve of the road game Saturday between his first-place team, missing five starters, and second-place FC Cincinnati.

That said, neither Martino nor anybody else expected Inter Miami to get routed 6-1, the team’s most lopsided loss of the season and the first time it conceded six goals in the club’s four-and-a-half-year history.

“We Want Seven! We Want Seven!” the raucous TQL Stadium crowd chanted after 19-year-old Gerardo Valenzuela, a Boca Raton native who started in Inter Miami’s youth academy, scored Cincinnati’s sixth goal.

FC Cincinnati, the defending Supporters Shield winners with the league’s best record in 2023, leapfrogged Miami in the standings with Saturday’s victory and is now in first place with 48 points and a game in hand. Miami is in second place with 47 points and 11 games remaining in the regular season.

Although it was only one game, and there is plenty of time to get back on track with its full roster later this summer, Martino warned that Cincinnati exposed deficiencies Miami needs to address to be among the top MLS teams. Miami has scored a league-high 51 goals but has allowed 37 goals, the most among the top eight teams in the East.

“We had a period early in the season where we were vulnerable in back, we started to fix that, the previous five or six games we had done a solid job defending, but this game we reverted defensively to how we played early in the season,” Martino said.

“Our opponent was better than us. We must take note of this. Cincinnati is one of the top three teams in the league. We are still not there despite our good results and performances. We have to keep working and hoping in the final part of the season we can improve with our full roster.”

Miami was slow in transition defense, gave the ball away time and again, and trailed 4-1 at halftime after conceding three goals in the final 10 minutes of the first half. As if that wasn’t enough of a hurdle to overcome, Miami was forced to play the final 30 minutes a man down after Sergio Busquets was ejected after a pair of yellow cards for dissent.

“For 30 minutes or so we could not control their offense, but we also were dangerous in attack, but those 10 to 15 minutes at the end of the (first) half were what determined what happened in the second half,” Martino said. “We could never resolve Cincinnati’s attack, they played very well, with high pressure from Lucho Acosta, Luca Orellano and Yuya Kubo. The reality is tonight we saw a big difference in what Cincinnati does and what we did.”

Inter Miami had won the previous four games (three of them on the road) without leading scorers Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez, who are with their national teams in Copa America. Their roster was even thinner against Cincinnati. Left back Jordi Alba and midfielder Diego Gomez served suspensions for accumulation of yellow cards and midfielder Matias Rojas was held out after returning from Copa America because Martino said he was not yet in condition to play.

Franco Negri replaced Alba in the starting lineup and Sergiy Kryvtsov started at center back instead of the quicker Tomas Aviles, who had a mild knee injury. Kryvtsov scored the only goal for Miami, briefly tying the game at 1-1 before Cincinnati’s barrage of goals.

Inter Miami’s midfielders and defenders could not contain MLS MVP Acosta, Kubo, Pavel Bucha and Yamil Asad, all of whom scored for Cincinnati. Kubo scored the first goal in the 10^th minute and another in the 57^th.

Martino knew that Acosta, the 5-3 Argentine speedster, would be a difficult matchup for Busquets, so he had Busquets play center back and assigned rookie Yannick Bright to stay on Acosta. The plan did not work, and Acosta wound up with a goal and two assists. He has 10 goals this season, two shy of Messi and Suarez.

“Our plan was for Yannick to cover Acosta; we had talked to him about that from before the Charlotte game,” Martino said. “Sergio knew he would play in back, as we wanted to avoid him dealing with Acosta’s mobility. We definitely had trouble containing Acosta, but also Kubo and Orellano. We won few duels with them. They got to balls a second quicker than we did and that cost us a lot.”

Inter Miami’s next game is at home July 17 against Toronto FC. Messi’s Argentina team and Suarez’s Uruguay team advanced to the Copa America semifinals July 9-10. The final is July 14 at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami. It is unknown whether Messi or Suarez will be available for the Inter Miami vs. Toronto game. Busquets will be suspended that game for the red card against Cincinnati.