Inter Miami CF’s winning streak, which stretched a club-best four matches across all competitions, was snapped Saturday night in a 2-0 defeat to the New England Revolution at Gillette Stadium.
But more concerning was the early injury exit of Leo Campana, who has spearheaded the club’s recent run of form with five goals in his last four matches as the starting center forward.
Inter Miami CF head coach Phil Neville said Campana had “tightness in the bottom part of his leg,” but there was no early timetable for his return.
“Leo has been our figurehead, he’s been the one that’s took the fight to the opposition and without him, it just felt like the ball was coming back at us,” Neville said.
Campana exited in the 12th minute with the Herons already trailing 1-0 on homegrown winger Damian Rivera's goal inside the opening minute after a failed Miami clearance.
Seven minutes after Campana went off injured, Aime Mabika followed with what Neville said was a muscle injury, forcing the head coach to burn two of his substitutions inside the opening 20 minutes.
“Leo is getting a lot of the praise, and rightfully so, Aime’s been really good the last four games as well,” Neville said. “I think what you saw tonight was an accumulation of playing three out of the last four games on turf. We’ve got another game on turf next week, and we lost two players, maybe three or four looking at some of the players in the dressing room now.”
Compounding Campana’s injury departure were red cards to defenders Damion Lowe and Jairo Quinteros for second bookable offenses in the final 30 minutes as the Herons suffered their first defeat since April 2.
“You can say all you want about the decisions to send the two lads off,” Neville said. “But I thought our discipline was really poor.”
Now the key for Miami is to recover, from injuries and the defeat, with a trip to Charlotte FC coming Saturday (3:30 pm ET | UniMás, TUDN, Twitter).
“We can’t feel sorry for ourselves because of one defeat. We just had a run of four wins on the bounce,” Neville said. “I think in this league, you can be streaky, you can go on runs of wins and losses. We’ve got to make sure we return to winning ways as quickly as possible.”
