Rodolfo Pizarro on MLS All-Star selection: "I am enjoying the moment"
The Inter Miami midfielder talked in LA about his present moment, which has seen him score goals and be named to the MLS All-Star roster
LOS ANGELES — Rodolfo Pizarro was planning to have a normal week. Then, he got some unexpected good news on Sunday around 7 pm that only added to his latest list of achievements.
He was heading to the MLS All-Star Game.
Pizarro was called in as one of the final adds to the MLS roster for this year’s showcase against counterparts from Liga MX, and the nod came at a great present moment for him. The Mexican midfielder was fresh off of scoring his first three goals of the MLS season to help resurgent Inter Miami to back-to-back wins for the first time in team history, bringing back to life a personal campaign that had up until then been more than challenging.
“Honestly, I am very happy and enjoying the moment,” Pizarro told Miami Total Futbol in Spanish. “I am very happy. It had been some difficult months. Two, three weeks ago everything changed. I was happy, I had been training well, and I had a lot of confidence. The results are starting to show, and I am very, very happy.”
Are they ever. Not only did the 27-year-old Pizarro become the first Inter Miami player to be named to the MLS All-Star team, albeit questionably, but he was also voted the MLS Player of the Week this past Monday. This after being selected as part of the MLS Team of the Week.
To say that the smiling Pizarro is in a much different place right now ahead of the 2021 MLS All-Star Game against Liga MX on Wednesday night at Banc of California Stadium would be an understatement. The Designated Player struggled with injuries and a dip in form at the beginning of the campaign, and was subsequently occasionally dropped from Inter Miami’s starting lineup.
He started feeling unimportant to the team as a result while subsequently losing confidence in himself. Rumors began to swirl soon after that he wanted out of South Florida for a return to Liga MX.
“I was not happy,” said Pizarro when asked of the reports linking him with a move back to his native Mexico, neither confirming nor deny their validity. “I was not enjoying the moment, and now everything is completely different. I think we all go through that. You cannot always be in a good way or at 100 percent. Sometimes you have to go through those lows.”
Pizarro has begun to put those lows in the rearview mirror, rediscovering the type of form that has made him such an influential figure so often in the past. He scored his first goal of the season on Aug. 18, clinically firing home a dramatic stoppage-time winner in a 3-2 comeback home victory over the Chicago Fire.
The attacker followed that up with a two-goal showing in a historic 3-1 triumph vs. Toronto FC, though the match at Drv Pnk Stadium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, also saw him and head coach Phil Neville have an animated exchange of words after the manager subbed out Pizarro.
“I felt that I could play 10-15 minutes more and score another goal,” said Pizarro about the reaction that Neville described in the postgame as angry. “I had been left with the feeling that I missed two other scoring opportunities, so I had the thorn in my side of wanting to get another goal. But it is no big deal, it is part of soccer, and it is normal.”
As for his relationship with Neville, Pizarro said it is a good one.
“He tries to get along with the entire group. He tries to unite the group,” said Pizarro. “I think in the last few weeks he has attempted to make the group become more united, which has changed for the team. We have been having lunches together and shared more moments amongst ourselves an all talk more, the Americans with the Latinos and everyone, and I think that has been the difference. “
Inter Miami has also shared more thrills and joy as of late, climbing up the standings and getting back into the fight for a playoff spot. Pizarro has played a decent part in that, and is eager to keep it going both in Wednesday’s All-Star Game and what rests of the MLS season.
“I am very happy and with a lot of confidence,” said Pizarro. “I have a lot of confidence to want to keep playing, to continue scoring goals, and to keep on winning.”
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