The search for Gerardo “Tata” Martino’s successor at Inter Miami took just a few days, with the Herons keen to dive head-first into preparations for a 2025 season that promises to be even busier than this one. year.
The process was arguably hastened by the fact that their final choice for the coaching job, Javier Mascherano, has a relationship that goes back five years.
“It’s, honestly, a journey with Javier. In August 2019, Javier and I were in my office in Miami,” managing owner Jorge Mas revealed to reporters during Mascherano’s official presentation at a press conference on Tuesday.
“We spent a whole night together because at that time I was thinking about bringing Mascherano in to play his final year as a player for our club before continuing as a coach, especially to help us build an incredible training center system here. »
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On the one hand, this appointment makes sense, as Mascherano will be reunited with his old friends and former Barcelona teammates, Leo Messi, Luis Suárez, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba. A compatriot of Martino, he will lead the Herons in a campaign filled not only with MLS matches, the Leagues Cup and the Concacaf Champions Cup, but also the big event of the recently expanded FIFA Club World Cup (a tournament which Mascherano won twice as a player) on home soil next summer.
However, this is widely considered a gamble given Mascherano’s limited coaching experience, which has mainly been with Argentina’s youth national teams, as well as the mixed performances of those teams under his leadership.
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“Outsiders can have their opinions, and that’s valid, clearly, but I’m confident I’m capable of leading this team. I’m very excited to do it,” Mascherano, 40, said in Spanish. “I can do it. I don’t doubt it. »
“Sometimes in football there’s not much about ‘experience’,” he added. “Beyond having three years as a coach, coaching the youth categories of the Argentine national team, where I have always been under pressure… I also have the support of almost 20 years as as a player and everything I experienced along the way. »
When asked how he would handle the task of managing friends and former colleagues like Messi, who is only three years younger than him, Mascherano noted that he has done it before, including with some of Miami’s young talents who were part of the Argentine national team.
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“I not only have a relationship with Leo, but I have three other players on this team that I played with for a long time. I have a close relationship with them, and I won’t deny it, he said. I’m not going to walk into the locker room saying I’m friendly. At the 2024 Olympic Games, I had to coach Nicolás Otamendi, who was a friend of mine. And there is no problem. We separate the two. One thing is work, and another is friendship. »
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