A spirited crowd of 46,080 spectators cascading noise across a future World Cup venue. Rosters packed with elite talent from across the hemisphere and beyond. The parry and thrust of two wealthy, ambitious clubs, one with the résumé of a true continental giant and the other determined to reach that level in record time.
Saturday night’s Leagues Cup clash between Tigres UANL and Inter Miami CF felt like two heavyweight prizefighters squaring off – but in the early rounds.
In an occasion rich with intensity and meaning, but inevitably a prelude to the win-or-else situations that lie ahead, Tigres drew first blood at Houston’s NRG Stadium, their adopted US home for this month’s trophy quest, and eventually hung on for a 2-1 victory over the Herons. Juan Brunetta’s first-half golazo and a thumping late winner from Juan Pablo Vigón booked first place in East 3 for Los Felines and salvaged some pride for LIGA MX amid a cascade of unfavorable results against MLS opposition in this tournament’s opening stages.
Over the decades, the powerhouse from Nuevo León have won just about everything there is to win in this part of the world. But the celebrations of players and fans at the full-time whistle suggested this one meant something, even with Miami shorn of their full contingent of superstars.
“This is a prestige game for us; it was an opportunity for us to play against a very good opponent and show ourselves that we are capable of acting like we did tonight,” Tigres boss and former Chicago Fire head coach Veljko Paunovic said in Spanish afterwards.
“And this has been very important motivation, because in the process that we are, we have to start seeing, believing that we can win games against strong opponents, with history, who’ve been shown to be champions.”
Measuring stick
All that said, it’s not quite crunch time yet. Thanks to victories over Club Puebla in their opening matches of the tournament, both combatants in this group-stage fixture were already assured of advancing to the knockout phase.
That surely influenced Paunovic to keep André-Pierre Gignac among the substitutes, and Gerardo “Tata” Martino’s decision to leave Luis Suárez back in Florida to rest, while Sergio Busquets was held on the bench until the 69th minute. Lionel Messi’s recovery from his ankle injury continues, while Diego Gómez and Benja Cremaschi are returning from France on Olympic duty with Paraguay and the United States, respectively – their national teams’ quarterfinal losses mean they’ll soon be available to Martino for selection again.
All of which added up to the Argentine manager feeling good about his side’s performance even in a losing effort. This was despite the Herons conceding the game’s first goal, as they so often have this year, and yet again the product of self-inflicted errors in the back line, with Brunetta’s excellence swiftly punishing Tomás Avilés for an overly casual attempt to pass out of his own penalty box.
“It was a good measure of where we are standing. Sometimes you start to stack up wins, like is happening in the league; until you face opponents with the power of Tigres, you don't know where you stand. So we discovered that in that sense we’re on a good path here,” said Martino, whose squad entered Leagues Cup atop the overall MLS standings, winning six of seven matches.
“If I'm not mistaken, Tigres has a full roster today,” he noted, “and we are missing four players … we could compete with an opponent who is a contender in the Mexican league, also for us it was very important … to show that this team is growing. We’re quite solid, we allowed goals on the edge of the penalty area that were more the product of individual quality than a scheme of play. What Brunetta did is very difficult to do; he scored an extraordinary goal.”
More to come?
As dominant – and at times admirably resourceful – as they’ve been in league play, Miami’s limitations were exposed in their last meeting with Mexican aristocrats, a humbling Concacaf Champions Cup quarterfinal exit to CF Monterrey back in the spring. Depth was a clear bugaboo then, and Martino said he was encouraged by the resilience of Saturday’s rotated lineup.
While Los Felinos were clearly the superior team in the first half, IMCF rallied after the break, leveling through a penalty kick earned, then coolly dispatched by Leo Campana. It took a couple of sharp saves from Tigres goalkeeper Nahuel Guzmán to prevent them from finding a second – “like in LIGA MX, they have the best goalkeeper in the competition,” Martino said of his countryman – only for a poor clearance from substitute Sergii Kryvtsov to hand Vigón an inviting look he did not spurn.
“We competed well, we played well, we managed to equalize, we had opportunities for the second goal, and we couldn't do it,” said Martino. “It seemed like we deserved a little bit more than what we got; we have the sensation that we can compete well with high-level teams.”
The level of contribution provided by the likes of Campana and Kryvtsov has been and will remain key to Miami’s hopes of achieving great things, starting with their Leagues Cup title defense. As to whether Tigres or their fellow LIGA MX giants will expose the Herons’ soft spots in the knockout rounds when they’re closer to full strength? Only time will tell.
“We felt it [a lack of depth] a lot when we played against Monterrey [in CCC]. But from Monterrey until now, we have a roster that is fit to be able to make changes that are at the same level as the ones that are playing, like Tigres, Monterrey, Cruz Azul and América,” contended Martino.
“We had a competitive team today and still we have four players out. So we can compete in this. We are missing the four players, I know. We know what they represent for our team. But today I can say that when we have a full roster, we can have the same importance and changes same as the strongest, most important teams in Mexico.”
