How Inter Miami's young stars support the "Fab Four" | OneFootball

By Charles Boehm

It’s been dubbed ‘the Messi factor,’ an overarching shorthand for the powerful allure of having the GOAT as a teammate. So just what does playing for Inter Miami offer to the Herons’ cadre of young players?

Newcomer Telasco Segovia got the message loud and clear from his national team coach when Venezuela visited Chase Stadium for a January friendly vs. the United States.

“I told Segovia, ‘You are earning a postgraduate degree in football,’ playing alongside Messi, Suárez, Busquets, and Alba – players who have competed at the highest levels and are champions,” Vinotinto boss Fernando ‘Bocha’ Batista, an Argentine who preceded Miami head coach Javier Mascherano as the leader of the Albiceleste Under-20s, revealed to the Spanish-language show ‘Sale y se acaba’ this week.

“If you can't learn here, you won't learn anywhere else.”

"It's a dream"

The 21-year-old attacker looks to have taken heed. With three goals and an assist in his first four appearances, three of those goal contributions racked up in Sunday’s 4-1 away drubbing of the Houston Dynamo, Segovia is off to a roaring start in Miami following his reported $2.5 million transfer (plus sell-on clause and add-ons) from Portugal’s Casa Pia.

“I am very happy for everything I am experiencing. I hope that there will be many more moments like this for this team,” Segovia told MLS Season Pass reporter Michele Giannone in Houston, attributing his rapid acclimation to having arrived “in rhythm” at the halfway point of the Portuguese season.

“To be playing with the best player in the history of the world, it’s a dream.”

He isn't the only youth to contribute. IMCF have also gained goal contributions from Benja Cremaschi, Toto Aviles and Noah Allen thus far, and key minutes from kids across the pitch. Indeed, they’re turning out to be nearly as fundamental to the Miami project as its 30-something superstars.

“Well, we have a mix, right?” Mascherano noted in a video interview last month. “A sort of hybrid between young players and more experienced ones, and our goal is to integrate them.”

Future is Bright

Half of the Herons’ 2025 first-team roster, 14 players, are age 23 or younger. Some are academy products and SuperDraft picks, others much-hyped youth internationals who cost millions in transfer fees. For a club participating in multiple tournaments like Concacaf Champions Cup and this year’s FIFA Club World Cup on home soil, their combined energy is central to squad depth and tactical variety.

Their upcoming schedule underlines why: The Herons host Jamaican outfit Cavalier FC in a CCC Round of 16 first-leg clash on Thursday, then welcome Charlotte FC on Sunday (4 pm ET | MLS Season Pass) before the return leg in Kingston next week. All of that is followed by a visit to Atlanta United for a massive Sunday Night Soccer fixture on MLS Matchday 4.

If the Fab Four are the brains of the operation – and Messi its “soul,” as Mascherano put it after the legend fed Segovia for a last-gasp equalizer vs. New York City FC on Matchday 1 – then the Herons’ corps of youngsters are its lungs and legs, the labor that multiplies the genius of those ex-FC Barcelona luminaries.

“Hell yeah! I know I'm not the one making passes behind the defense. I'm the one running,” 23-year-old central midfielder Yannick Bright told MLSsoccer.com during preseason. “And I'm OK with it. That's my job. So I don't think anybody can do it better than me.”

An unheralded 2024 MLS SuperDraft pick who took a winding journey to MLS from Italy’s lower divisions through a college soccer career at the University of New Hampshire, Bright epitomizes this dualism. He’s blossomed into a rugged, rangy engine-room presence next to the 36-year-old Busquets, logging more than 1,800 minutes across all competitions last season and ranking in the 90th percentile or better in tackles, interceptions, blocks and clearances compared to his global peers according to FBref.com data.

Along the way, he’s absorbed invaluable lessons from his elder colleague, one of the greatest holding midfielders of his generation.

“It's impossible not to learn, honestly,” said Bright, who credits the absences caused by last summer’s Copa América for providing him the opportunity to show the coaching staff he could be trusted. “When you're in this environment, you have to perform at that level, otherwise you won't play. So it's just a matter of adapting and adapting your game, surviving and thriving.

“A lot of tactical stuff that you definitely don't learn in college – a lot of smart decisions that he makes,” he added when asked what he’s picked up from Busquets. “It's nice to know what he thinks in different situations throughout the game, maybe when we're defending, when we're attacking, when he's got the ball, when he doesn't have the ball. I don't think there's anyone better than him that could explain it to me.

“It makes you think – like, there's levels, you know? And it's nice to learn from these people that are levels above other players.”

Learning through experience

Mascherano has spoken of continuity, of building on the “foundation” built by his predecessor, Gerardo ‘Tata’ Martino, rather than making fundamental changes. And IMCF’s youth core gained vital experience under Martino, though Cremaschi notes that even the coach himself acknowledged how circumstances forced his hand over his season and a half in charge.

“I don't know if Tata gave young guys that many opportunities. I think more than that it's because he had to – he had a lot of injuries, and that's why young guys got the opportunity. He even said it to us,” the homegrown midfielder and rising US international told MLSsoccer.com. “But I think us young guys are important to this team, because we're the ones with energy, we're the ones with the legs, and we need that in this team. We need people to get after the ball, to compete; we need to be the engine of this team.

“Javi knows that, he knows that we are important because of that. With the ball we could contribute as well, because we're talented kids that understand the game.”

Their tenacity and work rate on both sides of the ball has become part of Miami’s identity, particularly when Messi or other stars are absent due to injury, rotation or international duty. The Herons’ ability to reliably pick up points in those situations powered their march to the 2024 Supporters’ Shield and it was on display again in Houston, where Mascherano dialed up his squad’s press and repeatedly exploited La Naranja’s resulting turnovers as Messi rested back home.

Afterwards, the coach made sure to praise Segovia’s two-way play just as much as his finishing.

“We saw that obviously he has the quality, the jerarquía [level] to play in our team; he brings us many things, not only in the offensive part where he is very important, where he has combination play, where he has the last pass, where he also has goals, but also in everything that he is in defensive terms,” said Mascherano in Spanish, citing his observations of Segovia’s talent when Venezuela’s youth teams played his Albiceleste sides.

“He's a kid who gives his all, who helps us a lot in the defensive phase as well. And we know that we can also count on him in different positions; it gives us a diversity that makes him an important player.”

Some saw Mascherano’s relative dearth of head coaching experience as a reason for doubt when he was hired by Miami. Majority owner Jorge Mas pointed to his developmental track record with Argentina’s U-20, U-23 and Olympic sides as an important facet of his selection, however.

“We know that the weight of the team is carried by the experienced players because of the names they have. But that shouldn't fool us,” Mascherano said last month.

“The young people have to take a step forward and they are the ones who have to pull – and take advantage of the fact that the older players bear that pressure so that they can give us that leap in quality. So what we are looking for with the youngsters is that this year, they already begin to feel the fact of the importance they have within the team.”

Passing the torch

In Mascherano’s resume, and his emphasis on aggressive pressing and defensive diligence, IMCF’s kids see pathways for progress. That entails both collective success and the chance for individual advancement, like the club-record transfer Diego Gómez made from Miami to English Premier League side Brighton & Hove Albion over the winter.

“Javi was a youth coach, U-20s coach and U-23s coach, with Argentina. So I think he values the growth of young academy [products] or young guys that come from other places,” said Cremaschi. “The opportunities are big.”

The veterans recognize it, too. After first Messi, then Busquets was substituted off in Miami's CCC second-leg win over Sporting KC last week, Jordi Alba passed the captain's armband to Allen, the 20-year-old homegrown defender who’s earned his elders’ respect despite external concerns about his size and athleticism.

It was a fleeting detail in the dying moments of a long-decided series. Yet as Cremaschi points out, the small details matter quite a bit to a group hungry for multiple trophies after last season’s Audi MLS Cup Playoffs collapse.

“We believe in them. We know that they have a big potential,” said Mascherano in English afterwards. “So I love to work with [them] – obviously I love to work also with the ‘old guys’ or the big men, but I know that the young players can give us [so] much, and I tell them, they need to give a step forward.

“They have to believe in themselves.”

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