Atlanta United claimed a second consecutive victory on Sunday after defeating Orlando City 2-0. The win lifts the Five Stripes to sixth in the East with six points and a 2-1-0 record in 2024.
The Five Stripes rolled out the same starting lineup from the first two games of the season. Brad Guzan started in goal for his 200th match across all competitions, becoming the first player in franchise history to do so. Before heading off to represent Greece in the UEFA Euro Qualifiers against Kazakhstan, Giorgos Giakoumakis spearheads Atlanta United’s attack coming off his first MLS hat trick against New England Revolution.
The opener came for Atlanta United after Giorgos Giakoumakis played a perfect trivela pass to find Saba Lobjanidze on the right side. The Georgian winger cut inside past one defender and slotted it home to open his account in 2024 and give the Five Stripes a 1-0 lead after nine minutes.
Atlanta United went on to create the bulk of the chances in the first half, winning the xG battle 0.6-0.2 and outshooting Orlando 8-5. However, the Five Stripes failed to capitalize on any further attacks in the first half, which finished 1-0.
Orlando adjusted coming into the second 45′ and was able to handle Atlanta’s pressure much better than in the first half, leading to the visitors finding more opportunities to equalize. Thiago Almada having a rough game with several misplaced passes only added to the Five Stripes’ challenges.
But Atlanta stayed strong and got its due reward in the 71st minute when Giakoumakis hit a shot from outside the box that slammed into the crossbar and into the back of the net. The Greek’s fourth goal of the season gives the Five Stripes some breathing room with a 2-0 score.
Despite the Lions finding more success hampering Atlanta United’s build-up toward the end of the match, they were unable to get on the scoreboard and the match ended in a 2-0 win for the Five Stripes.
It was an overall good performance from Atlanta United, earning its first clean sheet of the season against one of the preseason favorites to top the Eastern Conference. The three points from this match are vital to the Five Stripes who next week will travel north with a depleted squad to face Lorenzo Insigne and Toronto FC on Saturday.
What did you think of the match? Let us know in the comments and submit your player ratings below! (If you’re having trouble seeing the entire form on mobile, go here.)
Can somebody, for the love of all that is holy, please correct Twellman’s pronunciation of “Lob-AH-janidze”?? As someone with a Ukranian last name, i get that some names are difficult, but when your counterpart is pronouncing it differently maybe that means you should question yourself.
My key takeaways:
Next match away in Toronto will be telling as to how the rest of the callups will affect the rest of the season.
Overall, i feel pretty good about keeping a clean sheet and bagging 3 points. Onwards and upwards
i see other opinions below but for me, my biggest disappointment last night was the midfield. the orlando midfield was without their best players, and the team was spent. this match was teed up for an almada/muymba/slisz midfield to run right thru them. and yet almost everything thru the middle was either bottled up or resulted in a turnover. muyumba was a way to wasteful with the ball and was regularly bodied off the ball in possession. slisz had some good moments, especially tracking back. but he also was caught out of position a lot and was wasteful with the ball. almada was meh…and i can’t remember saying that in all his time here.
thankfully, we had strong showings from wiley/sliva and lennon/saba, so like 80% of our attacks went down the flanks.
pineda blew it on his first sub as well imo. pulling off silva (who was a freaking menace and showing no signs of being gassed) for fortune…leaving muyumba (with a yellow) on the field. fortune for muyumba was a like for like that was a no-brainer imo.
3 points is 3 points (especially vs. orlando!) but i’m with guz that last night wasn’t good enough. we played against a tired heavily rotated team and they basically played us to a statistical dead heat, including xG’s. two really nice finishes made the difference but there is a lot to work on in training this week!
One specific criticism of Almada: with 2 minutes remaining, he stalls on a corner kick and grts a yellow. That’s fine, and serves a purpose (arguably), but then he sails the corner kick over everyone, ceding possession. Just take it short; there’s really nothing to be gained here. I think Lennon (or someone) ran over to the corner so that he could take it short, too.
Maybe it’s not that big a deal but it seems like poor decision making.
Midfield is vastly improved, and central defense is much more organized, than the past two years. I still think we give too much space out wide on defense, but can’t argue the result. Strong start at home, and if the best 11 all get going at the same time, we could be a handful.
Slisz and Stian were everywhere tonight on defense.
Entertaining and fun match. It should’ve been 4-0
Im excited to see the votes for this one
A few thoughts:
Almada is a good player, but I think it’s pretty clear why he’s not receiving big offers. The big clubs are becoming slightly more disciplined on their transfers and I just don’t view Almada as that great. He’s honestly a very good MLS player, but not even a consistently great one.
I know some folks were on the ref, but all-in-all, I think the replacement refs have been fine.
Saba played insane, which I had said mid-week was missing, but Silva was blah. Our front four really haven’t had a game where they all clicked yet.
Lennon is so happy he finally has a true striker up front to put away his beautiful balls.
Good point on Almada. Teams in Europe look for consistency more than anything, especially at the price point Atlanta is asking for. That makes it challenging for him to really get where he wants to go.
Almada is inconsistent and tonight was kinda not good.
Defn solid games by Saba and Lennon.
Some room for improvement but seems attainable.
Small sample but the defense seems more consistent thus far and Brad maybe less frazzled. Those things in themselves will be a major difference.
This is the first time I can say Almada was off
Said the same as we were walking out of the stadium. Could not remember the last time I said he had a truly poor end-to-end match. He almost seemed distracted.
The upside of last night’s match was we have a pretty good answer to the looming “how good can they be when Almada gets sold?” question.
Orlando’s defensive game plan was to immediately pressure Almada and get physical. The way they collectively reacted when he had the ball in their half clearly showed their focus was on him. That opened up space for others, but also forced Almada to drop deep to receive the ball with any space. We shall know soon how good we can be when Firmino fills in at the 10. That will certainly allow teams to shift focus to Gigi and the wings.
Disagree on the refs. 5 yellows to Atlanta United is absurd. Still not sure why Xande received a yellow. And at least 3 others were outright laughable. While not bad, they surely were not great. The win makes it easier to overlook the inconsistencies.
And none of those were judged consistently throughout the match. Wiley was a clean shoulder to shoulder, which should not have been a foul let alone a yellow. Orlando was just as vocal with the ref, yet the ref was quick to only yellow card us for dissent. I’ll have to watch the Muyumba foul again because it sure looked like a routine foul from my angle. My biggest issue is consistency or the lack there of. The replacement refs could be worse, but they certainly haven’t been great.
Definitely not great, but they’re also not replacing people that are great
Very fair
Xande picked up the ball and walked it ten yards upfield while chattering at the official, rather than leaving it for Orlando to take the free kick. It was obvious dissent.
That sort of thing happens all the time without getting carded, including by Orlando later that game. The only reason he carded Silva was because Orlando reacted to it and pulled him down, in what could’ve been argued as a red card depending on hand placement. He basically just gave Xande a card to placate Orlando.
Exactly. Plus, the “foul” was about 30 yards back, so it wasn’t like Xande was walking the other direction