3 Inter Miami players who won't be back in 2026 | OneFootball

Inter Miami will start the 2026 season with big changes. After a few seasons with big names and big moments, the club is saying goodbye to three important players.

Jordi Alba and Sergio Busquets are retiring, closing the book on two legendary careers. And Drake Callender will move to Charlotte FC. Their departures leave big holes to fill, on the field and in the locker room, and now the Herons have to rebuild and find the next leaders of the team.

3 Inter Miami players who won't return for 2026

Jordi Alba

Jordi Alba has revealed his intent to retire at the end of the 2025 MLS season. The Spanish left-back joined Inter Miami in 2023 after a hugely successful career at Barcelona and has now claimed he’s done with the beautiful game.

Not exactly unsurprising since Alba is 36 and has won everything there is to win in soccer, but it does feel like the end of an era. His overlapping runs and smart passes have contributed hugely to Miami’s style of play over the past few seasons.

Now, losing him means Miami has to figure out a new way of bringing spark from the left and find someone who can deliver the same attacking powder and calmness in the defensive phase of play.

Sergio Busquets

Sergio Busquets will also retire at the end of the 2025 season. Like Alba, he’s leaving on his own terms after 17 years of a long successful career.

For Miami, Busquets’ retirement is a little more painful. The Spaniard has arguably been the engine of the team. The calm one and the guy who can slow things down when they get crazy and speed things up when it’s time to go.

His talents for reading the game and his technical skills have paid dividends since he arrived and will not easily be replaced. You can’t just find another Busquets. Players with that kind of vision and positioning don’t come around often.

The retirement of Busquets likely means that the entire midfield will have to get reworked and switched to more energy and pressing instead of just replacing him with one player with the ability to control tempo. Which is not easy to find either way.

Drake Callender

Alba and Busquets are walking away, and goalkeeper Drake Callender is moving on. In August 2025 Inter Miami traded him to Charlotte FC for general allocation money, a classic MLS move that opens up flexibility for future signings.

Callender has been a mainstay for the club since their early days and was instrumental in the team’s success in winning the Leagues Cup in 2023. He saved and scored a penalty in the shootout.

However, that all changed with time, and Callender’s minutes dropped in 2025 especially after his injury. The team felt it was time to reset. It’s a move that from a roster standpoint, definitely adds up, even if it hurts a little bit for the fans.

When you lose three important players in one offseason like Alba, Busquets, and Callender it feels like a changing of the guard. But that’s part of the evolution of the club. The team is getting older maybe moving away from relying on world-famous veterans, to creating something sustainable for the future.

2026 will be different for Inter Miami that’s a given. But that’s football, eras end and new ones begin. If they do it right this could be the start of the next great chapter of the Herons.