Inter Miami coach Phil Neville on eve of 2022 season: ‘This finally feels like my team’
Long before Phil Neville arrived from England to take over as Inter Miami coach last year, he was an avid reader of books by American coaches. He read Phil Jackson’s “Eleven Rings” four times, and devoured Pat Riley’s “The Winner Within” and Bill Belichick’s “The Education of a Coach.”
When he watches sporting events, such as the recent Super Bowl, he studies both coaches’ sideline demeanor. He enjoys tuning in to postgame press conferences, particularly those with Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr.
Among the lessons he learned from those coaches is that you must read your locker room, make sure everyone buys in to your philosophy, and weed out anyone who does not. That is precisely what he and the club’s sporting director Chris Henderson did during the past few months after the team failed to make the MLS playoffs despite having the league’s most expensive payroll.
Neville and Henderson opted to load up on youth, speed, and hunger.
Eighteen players from last year’s team are gone, including two of the three highly paid designated players, Blaise Matuidi and Rodolfo Pizarro. Fiery Argentine defenders Nico Figal and Leandro Gonzalez Pirez are gone — Figal to Boca Juniors and Gonzalez Pirez to River Plate. Fan favorite and 2020 MVP Lewis Morgan was traded to New York Red Bulls.
The squad that opens the 2022 season Saturday at home against the Chicago Fire will have a new-look pink uniform and 14 new faces.
The only three regular starters from 2021 expected to be in the starting lineup Saturday are Argentine star forward Gonzalo Higuain, Brazilian captain Gregore, and left back Brek Shea. Goalkeeper Nick Marsman, forward Robbie Robinson, midfielder Victor Ulloa, and right back Kieran Gibbs are injured.
Among the likely new starters: U.S. national team right back DeAndre Yedlin, a quiet leader returning to MLS after seven years in Europe; Jamaican national team captain/center back Damion Lowe; 21-year-old Ecuadorean national team forward Leo Campana; Brazilian midfielder Jean Mota; Swedish-American center back Christopher McVey; and 20-year-old Bolivian national team center back Jairo Quintero. Speedy Ari Lassiter (son of Roy) is another player to watch.
“Looking back, you think about the disappointments the team suffered in the first season and they lingered into the second season,” Neville said. “I didn’t realize the impact of that first season until we started to lose a few games…then you started to see the true characters and personalities and the hurt, the remnants of the season before, not being successful, the high expectations and it got to the point where the team was so fragile it couldn’t take disappointment. It couldn’t take, in boxing terms, a punch on the chin. It would go down at the first bit of negativity, so we had to rebuild the squad with the right personalities.”
Miami finished in 11th place in the 14-team Eastern Conference last season with 12 wins, 17 losses and five ties. The team scored 36 goals, which tied for second fewest in the league.
The lowest point last season, Neville said, was the 5-0 home loss to the New England Revolution.
“That was the game where I thought, `Oh, I might be in a bit of trouble here,’” Neville told the Herald. “That was the real turning point. We could’ve gone either way. I’ve seen managers at those points where they think it can’t get worse than this, change things, go off track, change your philosophy, change your mood, change the way you talk to people and I made a conscious decision – Sir Alex Ferguson said `If I’m going to die, I’m going to die doing what I want to do.’ And I didn’t change.
“I ramped it up more in terms of my relentlessness in terms of what I wanted. Then we went on a run with two defeats in 13 games and it confirmed everything I needed to know about what management is really about, about staying true to who you want to be. That was my worst, but proudest moment because I stayed true to who I wanted to be.”
A brief pep talk from New England coach Bruce Arena after that lopsided Miami loss also helped.
“In football, as a coach, you’re going head to head with people, but there’s moments when coaches reach out for coaches and it was one of those moments where I’ve known Bruce for a long time, he’s almost like a father figure and almost a mentor and he probably realized that this young kid needed a little bit of help,” Neville recalled. “He just said `Stick with it, it will turn, you have a good team.’ That gave me that little bit of self-reassurance that subconsciously I needed.”
Neville and his players are determined to make a playoff run this season after the team failed to meet the owners’ and fans’ lofty — perhaps unrealistic — expectations in the club’s first two seasons. Before the inaugural game in March 2020, ebullient co-owners David Beckham and Jorge Mas promised a team that would play an attractive style, score lots of goals and vie for championships.
Instead, the team kicked off amid the COVID pandemic, finished in 10th place and the club owners parted ways with coach Diego Alonso and sporting director Paul McDonough. Last spring, the club was slammed with a $2 million fine and a reduction of $2.2 million in roster funding for breaking MLS rules by underreporting Matuidi’s compensation and that of a few other players.
Now, after a roster overhaul, Neville feels the team has the potential to make up for back-to-back underwhelming seasons.
“The words I’m going to be saying in my prematch talk is this finally feels like my team,” Neville said. “This feels like my boys going out on the field. This feels like the house that I built, the team I helped construct with the characters and profiles and players I wanted and that gives me so much excitement and confidence.”
He anticipates that watching his team take the field at DRV PNK Stadium on Saturday will be like sending a child off to college.
“It’s like your son is leaving home for the first time, and you’re saying `Go out there, spread your wings and fly, and go and enjoy yourself because I’ve got your back,’” Neville said. “I trust them, believe in them and I’ve chosen them. There are my boys.”
Yedlin, the highest profile of Miami’s new signings, played for Newcastle in England and Galatasaray in Turkey. The 28-year-old Seattle native became a father last fall and was ready to settle back in the United States. His longtime girlfriend has family in South Florida and Yedlin, a lover of fashion and the arts, feels right at home in Miami.
He is highly motivated to lead his new team.
“It’s a young team and that probably comes with a few more mistakes, but it also comes with guys that are hungry to fight and win, that want to prove themselves, which can honestly be worth more on the field than having super-experienced players,” Yedlin said. “I love to play with younger players because of that energy. I feed off that.”
Neville is undeterred by the fact that his roster includes many players unproven in MLS. Some early predictions have Miami near the bottom of the conference again.
“When I first broke in with Manchester United, someone said `You can’t win anything with kids,’ and we ended up winning the double, and we won it because of the talent and work ethic and the togetherness we had,” Neville said.
Playing at Man United also made Neville keenly aware of the value of the kind of global brand Inter Miami owners are aiming for.
“They want to do things bigger and better than anyone else,” Neville said, pointing out the unique pink jerseys as an example. “We want to stick our heads above the parapet, be a global brand, our social media content is phenomenal. Sometimes I think we put too much out there, but that’s what how you build a brand and fan base.”
Being a high-profile club carries a price. It makes the team an easy target for critics. Neville is fine with that.
“We have a saying in England, `Do you want to go to Blackpool on holidays or you want to go to the moon?’ This football club wants to go to the moon, and that’s no disrespect to Blackpool because we went there on my holidays many years with my grandmother.”
This story was originally published February 24, 2022 at 6:12 PM.