With the announcement from MLS that the 2020 regular season is set to continue in home markets later this month, Mexican international Rodolfo Pizarro and captain Luis Robles have set their sights on the team’s return and the first chance Inter Miami will have to play at Inter Miami CF Stadium.
“We’re waiting for the return of the season with great desire to play here in our stadium,” said Pizarro. “We are very happy to be here and to work in a more or less normal manner.”
“It’s definitely not the home debut that we had all imagined when we first signed on, but I think 2020 has been about adjusting your expectations and finding a way, whether it’s around or over or through or under obstacles and different adversities,” said Robles. “Though there’s been some very obvious challenges, I feel the group has done well to stay together. As we look forward to our home debut, our next game, and the next phase of the season, for us it’s about one thing: putting together a full 90 minutes as a team and putting together the type of performance that’s worthy of a win. We’re hoping to do that in our home debut.”
Despite the unusual circumstances, Pizarro believes the players felt safe at the MLS Is Back Tournament thanks to strict protocols put in place to ensure the continued health of everybody involved.
“Truthfully, we all felt safe. There were many protocols that we had to comply with in order to feel that way, feel safe and secure in the knowledge that nothing was going to happen to us,” said Pizarro. “Now that the league is going to begin again, there are still many protocols and that helps us feel freer and more fulfilled doing what we enjoy.”
Following the completion of the team’s participation in the MLS is Back Tournament, the players returned to the Inter Miami CF Training Center. There, hard work has been a theme for the team ahead of the next phase of the season.
“Our team has been working on everything: improving our defense, our offense, the flow with which we want to play a game, we’ve gone over our tactics, and even some things we’ve gone back to the basics. We’re going to make sure that no stone is left unturned because right now we’re in a position where we can make some big improvements.,” said Robles. “We wanted to utilize the time that we have to do just that. We’ve played a lot of intrasquad scrimmages, we’ve even done double days because for us the most important thing is getting results. Though we don’t feel we’re so far away from it, we wanted to really be able to use this as a positive time for us to get results.”
While the results weren’t what the team hoped, Pizarro and Robles still felt there were plenty of lessons learned and positives to take. The team will look to build on each of those as they approach the rest of the regular season.
“They were months of hard work despite not getting the results. I think we worked very hard and I do think the matches were quite intense ones in which we improved several aspects,” said Pizarro. “Now we have to go along the same path, trying to improve everything we did and trying to go for the points.”
“It’s going to be really important for us to get back onto the field and find that rhythm because I know it’s going to happen. We’re going to get that first point, we’re going to get that first win and we’re going to go on a roll," Robles concluded.
