Inter Miami bow out of MLS Cup play-offs with defeat to Nashville SC

Inter Miami’s debut season in Major League Soccer was brought to an end on Friday night after they were beaten 3-0 by Nashville SC at the Nissan Stadium.

Miami started the campaign with plenty of expectations, given the David Beckham co-owned club had to wait for a number of years to get in as the expansion franchise.

However, their performance during the course of the MLS regular season and MLS is Back Tournament was far from impressive and they finished with seven wins, three draws and 13 losses from the 23 games.

Still, they were able to make the play-in round for the MLS Cup play-offs after their victory over Cincinnati on Decision Day saw them leapfrog both Chicago Fire and Atlanta United, who suffered defeats.

Miami were always expected to face a tough challenge against Nashville, whom they had failed to score against in two meetings and they were not helped by the fact that Gonzalo Higuain, his brother Federico and Leandro Gonzalez Pirez tested positive for COVID-19 before the game.

As a result, Miami looked disjointed and uninspired from the beginning of the contest and they fell 2-0 down within the opening 24 minutes and never looked like recovering from the deficit as they lost by three goals at the end.

Meanwhile, Nashville, who are also an expansion franchise for 2020, have now made the first round of the MLS Cup play-offs and that is some turnaround for them from the start of the season.

Nashville had as many as ten players, who had contracted the coronavirus before the MLS is Back Tournament and that saw them withdraw from the one-off tournament without any participation.

As such, they had to play more games than most of their counterparts when the regular season was restarted and it’s a commendable effort that they are now within one game of the Eastern Conference semi-finals.

Gary Smith’s side are scheduled to face second-placed Toronto in the first round of the MLS Cup play-offs in Connecticut on Monday. They will meet each other for the first time.

Owing to the truncated 23-game regular season, each team did not play every other club at least once. As a result, Nashville and Toronto missed out on facing each other earlier.

Stats from Transfermarkt.com