Inter Miami earned the first points in Club history with a historic 3-2 win over Orlando City SC in the team’s first match at Inter Miami CF Stadium. The momentous occasion was marked by celebratory fireworks and celebrations as the players and staff were rewarded for their hard work.
“I’m very happy. The truth is the players deserved it. I think the staff, the owners, and above all the fans deserved a victory that we could dedicate to them,” said manager Diego Alonso. “I think that we’ve suffered too much in this time as we’ve deserved a lot more from our previous matches, and we hadn’t been able to get that win. We had to wait but I think we finally got it in the best way, playing in our home, winning in our debut here and making ourselves strong here.”
“I’m very happy to get the first win as a team. Luckily we got it here in our first match in our home stadium,” added two-goal man Julián Carranza. “I think we deserved to celebrate, we deserved to win points and I think that today we worked hard to earn it.”
“It feels great, it was a game in which we worked extremely hard,” said Wil Trapp. “We scored three very very good goals, the two of which came from Juli [Julián Carranza] which were fantastic goals, and then Rodolfo scored in the second half and almost made it four as well. We suffered a lot and it was difficult down the stretch, but we did enough, and I think for us it’s a huge confidence boost.”
The opportunity to play in the team’s home stadium, though it came without fans present, was still a significant boon to the team. The players and staff eagerly awaited this opportunity and were thrilled to celebrate it with a victory.
“For us it’s a very happy moment…I’m really pleased for the fans because they’ve been waiting for this for a long time. Unfortunately, they couldn’t share it with us here in the stadium. I’m certain that we’re going to be strong here in our stadium, but even stronger with them in it. Our home stadium will surely be a fortress and with our fans at our side we’re going to be a very difficult team to beat,” said Alonso. “It was huge for us...It was a pleasure to make history with this Club, to play the first home match and to win it. It’s something that will be remembered forever and it makes us happy that it happened this way. It makes us happy to make our fans happy.”
“We trained in the stadium and came in with a familiarity of the field and of playing without fans. We made ourselves strong in training, we focused really well and today we took that with us onto the field,” added Carranza. “I think we made ourselves felt as the home team and presented ourselves well. In the end we suffered more than we should have, but we felt really comfortable playing our first match here.”
The result came after four weeks of intense work for the team at the Inter Miami CF Training Center as they looked to sharpen their efforts entering the next phase of the Club’s historic inaugural season.
“I think we made the most of the four weeks of training we had, trying to correct and improve on the errors we made in the Orlando tournament,” said Carranza. “I think we had four really intense weeks of work and we knew how to make the most of them. On a personal level, I felt really good in training and I felt really good with how I helped the team.”
“The four weeks [of training] served us extremely well. We had time to decompress after MLS is Back and reorganize ourselves, but I think most importantly we were able to play games, albeit they were games against ourselves, but like Julián said we got to play in the stadium, we got to make it feel real,” said Trapp. “Ultimately with a new Club and new players, playing games is the most important thing you can do because you need to build chemistry. I think you saw the fruits of our labor a little bit tonight. We were a bit more together as a group, we had more cohesion and chemistry and ultimately it led to three points. I think for us that’s very encouraging and it’s something that we have to continue to build upon.”
