Miami FC Is A Team To Be Reckoned With
Photo credit: Orovio Photography/Miami FC
After escaping the heat and humidity in Miami, and escaping Oklahoma City with three points on Saturday night, Miami FC players quickly headed north to temperate Ottawa to prepare for Wednesday night’s match against Fury FC.
After training and lunch on Tuesday, some of the players headed out to see the sights in Canada’s beautiful capital city aware that the team’s two games in hand in the Fall Season Standings puts them in a position to move into the upper reaches of the table if six points can be secured. Miami FC (4W-2D-2L, 14 points) has played only eight games in the Fall Season while FC Edmonton, the current front-runners, have played nine; while New York, Indy, and Minnesota have each played 10.
“We’re not here for third, fourth, fifth, or sixth place,” captain and defender Jonathan Borrajo told NASL.com. “We’re here for first place, we’re here to win, to finish top of the table and win a championship. We’re not here for mediocrity. We’re here to put our stamp on this league. That’s the mindset now that we have after the Spring [Season]. We put ourselves in a hole and we’ve had to dig ourselves out.”
In the 10-game Spring Season, Alessandro Nesta and his men managed only one win and seven points while finishing in last place.
“It’s very hard, especially for European or South American people when they first get here, it takes a little bit of time to adjust,” striker Pablo Campos, a native of Brazil and NASL veteran, said. “But now we are in a good way.”
That “good way” has come by virtue of Miami FC’s moves to bolster the roster. The high-profile additions of Richie Ryan, Kwadwo Poku, Michael Lahoud, Gabriel Farfan, Jonny Steele, and now Vincenzo Rennella have transformed the team and given it new direction and a bite that was absent in the Spring Season. Add in the recovery from injury of the veteran midfielder Wilson Palacios and Nesta has his club hitting on all cylinders. The team has lost only once in its last six matches, winning three of its last four, scoring eight goals and allowing four over that span.
“What we’ve done is exactly what they do in Europe – a lot of quick moves, bringing in players all the time – that’s the mentality,” said Campos, the NASL’s career-leading scorer who got his first goal of the year in last weekend’s 2-1 at Rayo OKC. “In the NASL, we’re free to do what we need to do. And our owners want to win.”
On Wednesday night, Miami FC will confront Ottawa (3-0-6, 9), which has lost three straight games. Fury FC, a finalist last year, opened the Fall Season with three losses, then won three straight (all via shutout) and now has again lost three in a row. In the teams’ previous meeting at TD Place, on April 30, Ottawa came away with a 2-0 victory.
For Borrajo, the influx of new players has definitely made a difference, but he asserts that the pressure to perform – in training – has had a pivotal impact.
“First of all, finishing first is 100 percent possible,” he said. “The main reason, and I go back to Sandro and his staff, training is so competitive. He demands a lot of us, and because he demands a lot it makes you as a player have to raise your own bar. If each of us does, the competition keeps rising in training for positions.
“There is so much competition in the group and that’s what’s making us more successful on game day. That’s where the winning mentality starts for us, we’re always trying to win individual battles for a spot. He wants us to show him who deserves the jersey at the end of the week. He always says: ‘There are 11 players on the field, 18 on roster and guys up in the stands. Show me which one of the three sections you’re going to be in.’ ”
Campos said: “We have two games in hand and if we win both we can get up to second place. I’ll be happy to see that jump and improvement. The team has done so well.”
