Club World Cup: What did PSG's win teach Inter Miami and, hopefully, MLS | OneFootball

Major League Soccer's rules handicap Miami on the global stage

Many coaches tell disappointed athletes, "We didn't lose. They beat us."

That's just semantics. It shows up the same in the standings, but I get it. If our team plays its absolute best and the other team is better, there's no shame. They won; their team beat our team.

And Paris Saint-Germain beat the stuffing out of Inter Miami CF on Sunday.

The European champions scored four first-half goals and coasted to a 4-0 beatdown that knocked the Herons out of the FIFA Club World Cup. Some truly delusional fans are complaining about this or that player's performance, about the game plan, about the coaching staff...are their criticisms fair? Eh. Maybe. But even if all of Miami's players were healthy, if each player performed to the best of his ability, if Javier Mascherano installed the perfect game plan and made perfect in-game adjustments, the Pink & Black still couldn't have defeated PSG without divine intervention from whatever soccer gods there may be.

Les Parisiens, who won the UEFA Champions League title on May 31 with a 5-0 thrashing of Italy's Inter Milan, were just that much better. (For more about the match, see Michelle Kaufman's report for the Miami Herald.)

Herons' players and fans should be proud of their showing

So, after brief disappointment yesterday, I realized I'm very proud of Inter Miami. The Herons' ownership group, comprised by England great David Beckham and billionaire Cuban American brothers Jorge and Jose Mas, always have insisted they will compete on the world stage; the team's name, Club Internacional de Futbol Miami, is directed at a global audience. Inter Miami played its first match in 2020; no matter how ambitious their plans, it's hard to believe Sir Becks and the Mas Brothers expected to be facing the kings of Europe in the knockout stages of an international tournament this soon.

Miami made history to get there, going undefeated in the group stage of a tournament at which some critics said they didn't belong. But the Herons tied Al-Ahly and Palmeiras and became the first MLS team ever to beat a European club in international competition when they outlasted Porto FC 2-1. Miami was the only MLS club and one of just two North American clubs to advance to the knockout round of the expanded Club World Cup (the Los Angeles Galaxy and Seattle Sounders also competed in the group stages.) You bet I'm proud, and I'm looking forward to seeing what this club can do with the rest of this season.

Still, it's clear the Herons and Major League Soccer have a long way to go to truly consider themselves part of the soccer stratosphere. In a 2010 interview, MLS Commissioner Don Garber said the league would be "one of the top leagues in the world" by 2022 and said he would base its progress on "the quality of play, the size of the fan base, the television audience and the overall interest in and awareness of the sport."

Certainly, interest in and awareness of MLS has grown dramatically over the past 15 years, and viewership and attendance are strong. A quick look at four recent rankings of soccer leagues around the world showed Major League Soccer ranked ninth in two and 10th in the other two (here's a link to the website Soccer Vista and the most recent rankings I used (not surprisingly, the top seven leagues in this list are from Europe). According to a story at the Give Me Sport website, 17 of the top 20 leagues worldwide are in Europe, and the Global Football Rankings site, which ranks 76 leagues worldwide, gives Europe 15 of the top 20 spots.