Inter Miami coach Javier Mascherano dismissed the idea that the team performs better without Luis Suárez on the field. The coach insists that he needs every player on the roster to beat FC Cincinnati on Sunday and reach the Eastern Conference final.
The team advanced to the MLS playoffs after defeating Nashville SC in the first-round series, winning the decisive final match 4-0 without Suárez on the field.
The Uruguayan striker watched from the sidelines after MLS imposed a one-match suspension on Suárez for violent conduct.
Suárez contributed 10 goals and 10 assists in 28 regular season matches to propel Inter Miami to third place in the Eastern Conference standings. The club is now preparing to travel and face FC Cincinnati at TQL Stadium in Cincinnati, Ohio, in the knockout match, hoping to advance to the Eastern Conference final for the first time in club history. When asked if Sunday’s match could be considered the most important since the team debuted in MLS, Mascherano laughed before disagreeing with the premise. “We’ve been saying that all season, the Concacaf Champions League semi-final, the Club World Cup, it’s welcome that each time there’s a more important match than the one we played before,” said Mascherano. The coach emphasized later that the idea of losing the match has not entered his mind, preferring instead to focus on the challenge of facing Cincinnati and preparing alongside his players. “It’s not in my head not to win. The team has reached this part of the season in the best way, and I say this not only because of the level we have and have shown in the previous round, in the day-to-day and the atmosphere that the team has, how the team has trained.” Inter Miami now enters the Eastern Conference semi-final with a mostly healthy squad after several players left the club to participate in the November international window. Lionel Messi and Rodrigo De Paul, who joined Argentina in a friendly against Angola, returned to regular training on Monday, while Ian Fray suffered a blow with the Jamaican national team and remains doubtful for Sunday’s match.I’ve always said the same thing, for a team like ours with the long season we knew we would have from the beginning; to be successful and achieve our goals, we would need all the players. And I still think the same. The team needs everyone to keep moving forward, as a coach, I will continue to make decisions based on what I believe the game needs. No two games are the same; Cincinnati is not Nashville. They play differently.
Javier Mascherano
