Soccer <\/p>\n
The Sunday Night Soccer presented by Continental Tire show heads back down to Fort Lauderdale for the first Florida Derby match in a full year (7 pm ET | MLS Season Pass, Apple TV+<\/a>). That\u2019s right \u2013 the last time Inter Miami CF<\/a> and Orlando City SC<\/a> renewed their vows was May 15 of 2024, a night that produced a contentious scoreless draw.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n I think we\u2019re expecting more goals and just as much bad blood this year. The hosts got off to a torrid start but have hit hard times lately, as the wear and tear of getting everyone\u2019s best shot every week seems to be getting to them.<\/p>\n That\u2019s music to Orlando\u2019s ears since they\u2019ve played better this season when they\u2019ve brought an emotional edge to the game, including during their current 10-game unbeaten streak. There’s gonna be plenty of that in this Rivalry Week showdown, before LA Galaxy<\/a> and LAFC<\/a> resume El Tr\u00e1fico pleasantries for Part 2 of our Sunday Night Soccer doubleheader (9 pm ET | MLS Season Pass, Apple TV+<\/a>).<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Inter Miami CF<\/strong><\/p>\n Orlando City SC<\/strong><\/p>\n The Herons were flying, atop the Supporters\u2019 Shield standings on 2.6 points per game through the start of April. Part of that was they have Messi and Su\u00e1rez and other good players, so you\u2019re gonna brute force some wins if that\u2019s your lineup. But a bigger part was they were playing the type of ball that indicated they\u2019d remain at those lofty heights for months to come.<\/p>\n That has gone away over the past month. Instead of tightening up defensively, they\u2019ve gotten gappier through midfield. Instead of becoming less reliant on Messi as players have settled in, they\u2019ve thrust more onto his shoulders.<\/p>\n And so they have suffered. They’re 2W-2L-3D in league play since the start of April, but overall it\u2019s much worse: 3W-5L-3D. This 11-game stretch has laid bare their shortcomings while knocking them down the Shield standings and out of the Concacaf Champions Cup<\/a> entirely.<\/p>\n The performances have been bad, and the body language has been worse. A home loss to a rival bringing hundreds of fans with them for the trip? My god, man. It\u2019d be panic stations.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n House money, really. The nice thing about going against a team with Messi and the other FC Barcelona boys is you\u2019re not really expected to win \u2013 at least not by the public and the press, and not even, probably, by most of your own fans. There\u2019s just such a perceived gap in quality between the talent on both teams that all the pressure naturally falls onto the guys in pink.<\/p>\n The reality, though, is Orlando know very well they have every chance of winning this game and the perceived gap is fictional. Minnesota<\/a> showed it last week, Vancouver<\/a> showed it twice in a dominant, two-legged CCC series win and Orlando themselves have been showing it (for the most part, anyway; let\u2019s not talk about that 5-0 loss<\/a> in March last year) since Miami entered the league a half-decade ago.<\/p>\n So the stakes are the same as they always are against the Herons: win and you get headlines that impress the neutrals, bragging rights for the fanbase, and three points that really, really matter in the standings and the locker room.<\/p>\n Accomplish all that and the unbeaten streak, of course, goes to 11.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Inter Miami CF: Defensive form<\/strong><\/p>\n The numbers are not terrible compared to last year’s team, but the eye test is a big old ooof. Javier Mascherano told me before their game at Houston<\/a> on Matchday 2 that it would take Inter Miami about two months to figure out their ideal center-back pairing and back four. Well, we are way past that point and they haven’t found it. Any combination has been shaky and honestly, their best center back has been Noah Allen \u2013 and he’s not a natural at the position.<\/p>\n Mascherano has a lot of work to do. It also doesn’t help that the defensive midfield is in the same situation. I don’t believe they have found the best candidate to pair with Sergio Busquets<\/a>. I think it should be Yannick Bright<\/a>, but also believe they’re trying to give Federico Redondo<\/a> all the chances they can, potentially to the detriment of the team.<\/p>\n Orlando City SC: Mart\u00edn Ojeda’s form<\/strong><\/p>\n The Argentinian is the best player in MLS that nobody is going crazy for. He\u2019s my second favorite player to watch in the league right now behind RSL<\/a>‘s Diego Luna<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ojeda started the season scorching everyone and everything, and he was my MVP pick by Matchday 7. After that, he got into a bit of an offensive slump (as the whole team did) with no goals and no assists for five games. No m\u00e1s. Four goals in the last two games, eight total for the season (plus three assists) and he’s back into my MVP race. If I must vote for my 2025 MLS MVP today, it would be a toss-up between Ojeda and San Jose<\/a>‘s Cristian Espinoza<\/a>.<\/p>\n I believe Ojeda is going to absolutely torture whoever is playing right back for Miami on Sunday night (Marcelo Weigandt<\/a>, Gonzalo Luj\u00e1n<\/a>, etc.) and have a monster game.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n They\u2019ve primarily played out of what I\u2019ll call a 4-4-1-1 this year when both Messi and Su\u00e1rez have been available. Messi is nominally a forward in that shape \u2013 they\u2019ll usually defend with a front two and banks of four behind him, so it looks like a 4-4-2 without the ball \u2013 but he\u2019s totally free to drop in and become a playmaker, or flare wide to become a winger, or even, yes, do forward things running off of Su\u00e1rez\u2019s movement and hold-up play.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a completely free role, and that\u2019s why I hesitate to call it a 4-4-2. In the modern game, the function of the 4-4-2 is to create a forward partnership that operates almost exclusively in transition (there are no possession-focused 4-4-2 teams anymore).<\/p>\n With Messi, the game is simply oriented around him because when you orient things around Messi, he makes goals happen:<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Messi releases a pass. The defender turns his head for a half-second. Messi is gone.<\/p>\n How many hundreds of times have we seen this over the past 20 years? pic.twitter.com\/tYKsw0wpyO<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2014 Matthew Doyle (@MattDoyle76) February 23, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n The midfield balance then becomes simple: Sergio Busquets and either Federico Redondo or Yannick Bright deep, with a pair of runners \u2013 some combo of Faf\u00e0 Picault<\/a>, Telasco Segovia<\/a> and Tadeo Allende<\/a> \u2013 in front of them. Of the three, Picault has been the most consistently dangerous and useful this year because he\u2019s the one who most consistently makes unselfish runs into the depth. Players like that are purely additive alongside Messi and Su\u00e1rez.<\/p>\n Segovia has had moments of brilliance on the ball, but is still sorting his way through what to do off of it. And Allende\u2026 might finally have had his breakout game in Wednesday’s 3-3 draw<\/a> at San Jose.<\/p>\n The backline is oriented around Jordi Alba<\/a>\u2019s relentless desire to push forward, which has its pluses and minuses. The biggest plus, obviously, is that he and Messi have a decades-long mind-meld in the final third. When the GOAT finally retires and the six-hour-long \u201cAll Messi\u2019s Goals\u201d compilation is released, Alba might show up more often in a supporting role than anyone except Dani Alves.<\/p>\n The minus is this:<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2014 Major League Soccer (@MLS) May 10, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n That\u2019s on Jordi. He goes walkabout for no reason at all.<\/p>\n He does that a lot, though usually it\u2019s on the overlap. That means Allen slides out wide and the back four becomes a back three as the Herons shift into a 3-2-5 shape with the ball, as most modern teams do.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Since Day 1 in MLS, Orlando head coach Oscar Pareja has preferred a 4-2-3-1 with a classic No. 10. That\u2019s how he won the Shield-US Open Cup<\/a> double with FC Dallas<\/a> nine years ago, and it\u2019s how he scraped the Lions off the bottom of the table since his arrival in central Florida at the start of the decade.<\/p>\n But as the game and personnel have changed, Pareja\u2019s had to change as well. The big one, in my opinion, is the tactical shift: Orlando are still using a 4-2-3-1, but instead of a 4-2-3-1 with a pulley system where one fullback stays if the other goes, which creates overloads on one side or the other (with the downside of occasionally getting the rest defense out of whack and leaving the backline exposed), they\u2019ve shifted to the asymmetrical version where only one fullback pushes forward and the opposite fullback tucks in to create a back three.<\/p>\n For Miami, it\u2019s Alba (the left fullback) who pushes up while the right fullback tucks in. For Orlando, it\u2019s right fullback Alex Freeman<\/a> (No. 30 on the graphic below) who’s flying forward:<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n
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Inter Miami CF<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
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Orlando City SC<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n