MLS NEXT success, USYNT call-ups highlight Inter Miami Academy’s evolution

When he assumed his role as Academy Director, there was a solid foundation put in place by now-Inter II coach Darren Powell and first-team assistant Jason Kreis. But Dalrymple had plenty of room to work, and started to identify ways to tweak, build and improve. One of those was ensuring that there was a consistent message across the age groups. Coaches presented their in-game ideas and club identity to the rest of the staff, and Dalrymple took it from there.

“My job is just to tie it all together, get the consistencies and commonalities, and making sure that when a player moves from U-13 to U-14, it’s not a completely different style, it’s not a completely different voice, it’s not a completely different way the coach wants that individual to play,” he said. “There’s consistent consistency. That was a big, big implementation this year, the coaches really bought into that some real good, healthy discussion on how we see the game, and how we want to keep it true to South Florida and keep it true to Inter Miami.”

One of the biggest themes that emerged from those discussions was possession. But more importantly, purposeful possession.

“Typically, in South Florida, it’s keeping the ball for sake of keeping the ball, but we want it to be more purposeful, a little bit more vertical, a little bit more effective to turn teams a little bit quicker than traditionally South Florida teams would want,” Dalrymple explained. “We want to make sure we emphasize speed: speed of thought, speed of movement and we took opportunities or took advantage of opportunities of transition.”