Inter Miami confirms Diego Alonso still the coach — for now — after ‘miscommunication’
Inter Miami confirmed through a spokesperson that Diego Alonso, hired less than a year ago with high expectations, remains coach of the team after a “miscommunication” during his season-end meeting with team ownership led to rumors that he had been fired.
The club’s sporting director and COO Paul McDonough stepped down last week, and a few sources said that Alonso was also let go, but that is not true, according to the club management. What happened, they said, is that owners expressed their displeasure with how the season went during an emotional meeting, Alonso assumed he was fired, told some staff members and the word leaked out.
Alonso’s future with the team “is still not determined,” according to the club.
Alonso, a Uruguayan who had success coaching in the Mexican league, was hired Dec. 30, 2019, after a lengthy, exhaustive search that made headlines and sparked rumors across the world. He was introduced at a Key Biscayne waterfront press conference, set against the backdrop of the sweeping downtown Miami skyline.
At the time, McDonough said of Alonso: “He understands this region, he understands the type of players we’re going to have and he’s been successful everywhere he’s been. He’s coached at two big clubs in Pachuca and Monterrey. He has very clear ideas in what he expects from players and how he expects them to work and carry themselves. I think he’s a really, really good guy. He’s someone I can work really well with.”
Less than a year later, McDonough is gone, as are 15 players from the original roster.
The team ownership group, led by David Beckham and Jorge Mas, has big dreams, spent close to $100 million on the training facility and temporary stadium in Fort Lauderdale and signed one of the league’s most expensive rosters. Argentine forward Gonzalo Higuain, at $7 million a year, is the highest-paid player.
Despite the investments, the team finished 10th of 14 teams in the Eastern Conference and lost in the opening round of the playoffs with a 3-0 loss to fellow-expansion club Nashville SC.
Alonso had led Pachuca and Monterrey to CONCACAF Champions League titles but had no experience in MLS. Like many foreign coaches who join MLS, he had little knowledge of the player pool, the intricacies of the league’s complex business structure or the culture. Learning all of that during a global pandemic made Alonso’s job even more challenging.
The timing of Alonso’s hire and the signing of marquee players also did not work in his favor. Alonso was hired Dec. 30, 2019, just three weeks before training camp and after much of the roster had been signed. Three of the team’s top players — Leandro Gonzalez Pirez, Blaise Matuidi and Higuain — did not join the club until Summer. Gonzalez Pirez came in July, Matuidi in August and Higuain in September.
Of the seven head coaches hired last off-season, six came from outside the United States and Canada. Four of them had no MLS experience.
The Los Angeles Galaxy parted ways with its Argentine coach, Guillermo Barros Schelotto, with three games remaining in the regular season. The Galaxy was in last place in the Western Conference and had lost eight of their previous nine games. Schelotto was in his second season as coach. He had played three seasons with the Columbus Crew and then coached in Argentina and Italy before taking the Galaxy job.
There have been some foreign coaches who had success early, most recently Gerardo “Tata” Martino of Argentina, who left the Argentine national team in 2016 to coach MLS expansion club Atlanta United. He was hired by McDonough, then the GM at Atlanta. The club tied for third place in the Eastern Conference its first season and set an MLS record with a crowd of 67,221 at its opening-round playoff game, which it lost in a penalty shoot-out to Columbus.
In his second season, Martino led Atlanta United to the MLS Cup championship, bringing the city of Atlanta its first major sports title since the 1995 Atlanta Braves. Martino left in 2019 to coach the Mexican national team.
Dutch coach Frank De Boer, who replaced Martino at Atlanta, lasted just a year and a half before he and the club mutually agreed to part ways on July 24, 2020.
Most of the longest-tenured MLS coaches have extensive history in the league.
Both teams in the MLS Cup final on Saturday were coached by Americans — Brian Schmetzer of the Seattle Sounders and Caleb Porter of the Columbus Crew, which won the championship 3-0.
Of the four teams that made the MLS Cup semifinals this year, three were coached by Americans — Schmetzer, Porter, and Bruce Arena (New England Revolution). The fourth, Minnesota United, is coached by Adrian Heath, a native of England who has been in the United States since 2011. Heath coached Orlando City’s USL team from 2011-14, then stayed with the club in 2015-16 when it joined MLS, and then moved to Minnesota.
“It’s never easy being a foreign coach in a league,” said U.S. national team coach Gregg Berhalter, who coached the Crew in MLS and in Sweden from 2011-13. “Knowing the player pool is really important. It really comes down to reaching the players that you work with. You have to be able to connect with your group to get the most out of it. MLS is really balanced. If you don’t have your group fighting together, it’s going to be really tough to win games.”
This story was originally published December 14, 2020 at 3:32 PM.