Atlanta United made the trip to that city with the big arch thing and pulled a draw against sophomore club St. Louis City. The match was the first competitive fixture between the two sides, with coach Rob Valentino rolling out a similar back-three to prior matches, with two strikers in Daniel Rios and Jamal Thiare up top. Here are your final whistle thoughts as Atlanta United ends their road trip with a solid 4 points in 2 matches.
Jay Fortune
Y’all have to understand I write these First Reaction articles as the match plays out, and the subsequent points are often written as they happen. Jay Fortune was one of the first players that caught attention because of his awareness in picking out and intercepting some of St. Louis’ passes in the defensive third, and he played that number six position admirably. St. Louis presses like a gluten-free Red Bulls and despite missing tons of starters, Atlanta and Fortune handled it fairly well. Jay in particular was simply everywhere, even taking a screamer of a shot in the second half off the woodwork.
Earlier, Fortune picked out Jamal Thiare near the end of the first half with a beautiful ball to spring a counter, but Jamal Thiare’s subsequent shot was less than ideal. Overall, it was a solid outing for a young player that Atlanta has always rated very highly. In fact, it’s been a banner week for some of the young guys like Matt Edwards, so kudos to the Atlanta United Academy pipeline.
Pragmatic
I’ve used this word more times in the past week than I have in my entire life (like three times on St. Louis radio alone), but three matches into the Rob Valentino era and we’re seeing this Atlanta United team line up in ways that just make sense based on the opponent and the Five Stripes’ players at his disposal. In this case, it’s obvious St. Louis is a press-oriented squad, albeit much less effective than in their freshman year, and having two strikers up top seemed like the best way to keep the build-up unpredictable.
St. Louis’ goal came from poor defending and poor clearing more than their actual press. The most frustrating aspect of being a coach is watching your team give away silly goals when they’re set up in the best possible way to win a game. The final result may not have been what Atlanta wanted, but the back three certainly gave them a fighting chance and they pulled out another road point.
“However”
Kudos to PRO for providing one of the best reffing moments we’ve ever seen. This would’ve never happened had MLS not implemented the in-stadium announcements on VAR rulings, but the moment Filip Dujic stepped away from the monitor it appeared he was mentally preparing what he was going to say.
The subsequent explanation did not disappoint. He noted that upon review, there was no offside on the play – which was the main point of contention in St. Louis’s goal review. Klauss appeared to have gotten in the way of Brad Guzan as the shot approached, but it took a deflection off Efrain Morales which essentially nullified the offside call.
However…..
Prior to all of that, St. Louis had won possession thanks to a tackle on Tristan Muyumba that turned out to be a foul when it was checked on the review. Dujic then proceeded to turn the St. Louis crowd cheers into boos as he waved his hand indicating “but wait…there’s more,” and explained the full sequence. Needless to say, the “ref you suck” chants proceeded in force.
A solid road trip
Rob Valentino led the team to a win and draw on their road trip, which is pretty solid all things considered. Injuries, international duty, suspensions…this team has had it all, and they’ve fought like hell to come away with what they can. Now it’s time to rest and get back to winning ways at home. Rob Valentino invited that away-match pressure after the Houston match, going so far as to say “bring it on.” The squad showed a solid account of themselves on a short turnaround and should be proud.
Let us know below what y’all thought of the match!
Jay Fortune got a nice shout out on major league soccer soccer dot com – young players of the week.
https://www.mlssoccer.com/news/young-players-who-most-impressed-in-matchdays-21-22
This a footballing month, games on all day long.
I am not familiar with this Saint Louis team. I actually thought the game looked second divisionish, very messy, ugly football, but coming away with a point awy from home is always good.
And your USMNT did well.I think they are the most talented team you ever had, they are young, and quite good (except the number 13 guy in defense). I think the pass is not that good yet (the passes reach the destination, but I think too often the weight is not right, and the team loses possession a lot). Your goalkeeper doesn´t look that sure of himself, and this could cost against better oposition.
Bolivia is one of the less skilled teams in South America, but they are usually a lot grittier than they were today. I think it was a fine start, if helps the team to gain confidence. But, to face the good ones, your team needs to be a lot better at finishing. They were so wasteful tonight! Imagine this against Chile, Colombia, even Uruguay.
The team has what it takes to make a fine Copa, I think. But you need a matador, and I did not see any yet.
The US vs a Uruguay match will be wild, for sure, and totally agree: Balogun and Pepi can’t be that wasteful from here on out or the team will be punished.
What a fun month of football though!
Pepi is the one who missed right in front of the goal because he could not compensate for the bounce. I remembered Romario, or Josef, how they could make it, and make it look easy. Your team lacks this, a true matador.
We don’t have a scorer. It was evident last night.
We should have had 4 or 5 goals against Bolivia, and it is troubling we did not. If we cannot finish, Panama will give us trouble and Uruguay will probably beat us outright.
The Athletic reporting AU in deep talks with the Botafoga/Lyon/Crystal Palace ownership group for Almada at 20m.
Despite all of Almada’s critics, I’m sad to see him go. He was one of the reasons I kept going to the games, but he needed better players around him. I just hope we get a very good, productive, aggressive, fast and happy (always smiling) #10
He’s not gone yet. The article says the group wants him to go to Brazil first and Almada is balking at that. It’s hard for me to see him agreeing to leave just to go to Brazil, but if the group agrees to send him to Europe, the deal should happen.
Well, IMHO he’s not well suited to EPL but French or italian leagues would be best for him, just saying.
I’d love to see him go to Olympique Lyon as I subscribe to Fanatiz and they have matches from Ligue 1. It would give me a chance to see how he does there.
I think if real, this is the chance for both Atlanta, and Almada. Botafogo has this very rich American owner, and they have been one of the best teams in Brasil.
Almada is never going to agree to go to Brazil unless maybe they can give him a 100% guarantee in January he’d go to Europe. I’m not criticizing Brazil or Serie A, but it seem that Almada is afraid if he goes back to South America, he’s never going to Europe. I expect him to refuse any offer that doesn’t send him to Europe.
Makes sense.
Well, the Russian mechanics beat Portugal, so anything is possible
According to TransferMarkt via an outlet called Chronicle Live, AU, along with Charlotte, is eyeing Callum Wilson as an incoming summer transfer to replace GG.
Doug Roberson from AJC is banging the drum that it is not real news, so hopefully he is wrong
MOTM had to be Williams imo. He was incredible, and always in the right place right time. Cobb and Morales were also excellent in the back line for the most part.
Wiley had a good game going forward. Brennan isn’t “there” yet, but I feel like in a year he will be better than Mosquera, and right now he’s only a little bit behind. I’d much rather play Brennan.
Their goal was a result of us mot reorganizing after the chaos that followed the giveaway. Wiley was on an island with 3-4 STL players and nobody dropped to help. He got pulled to the endline too much and couldn’t recover, but it’s not really his fault
I will totally take alternating wins and draws. So , if I am mathing correctly, according to the Valentino Interim Manager theorem we shall win this coming Saturday. Not sure how , but it will happen. It is science folks – you can’t argue with it
I enjoy science
Could’ve, would’ve, should’ve type of game.
Another Hard one to watch, but we didn’t lose. To me, the important issue is we are getting results that frankly, we were not getting with Pineda. Rios is sloooooow and missing way too many opportunities to create something; not to mention actual chances he had, but that’s what we have. On the penalty: did their goalie leave the line too soon? I thought so…
“In statistics, regression toward the mean (also called reversion to the mean, and reversion to mediocrity) is the phenomenon where if one sample of a random variable is extreme, the next sampling of the same random variable is likely to be closer to its mean”
“Post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin: ‘after this, therefore because of this’) is an informal fallacy which one commits when one reasons, “Since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X.” It is a fallacy in which an event is presumed to have been caused by a closely preceding event merely on the grounds of temporal succession. This type of reasoning is fallacious because mere temporal succession does not establish a causal connection.”
Was there a soccer comment in there? I missed it 😱 if soccer was statistically dependent, there wouldn’t be a reason to play the game. Yes, we need larger sample to evaluate Valentino but we seem to be playing with more “gusto” even though the soccer quality is lacking
I’m sure you’re aware then that if you hypothesize a mean given a set of variables, and test that hypothesized mean by sampling data; then the larger the sample size, the more probable it is that your sampled mean represents the true mean of the full dataset you’re sampling. So if after a large sample size your sampled mean is far from your hypothesized mean, then you should reject your hypothesized mean because it is statistically wrong.
So in this case, we had a PLENTY large sample size with Pineda to determine that the team, on average, performed poorly under him. He had a great 2nd half of the 2023 season, but in the overall time he was here the team underperformed expectations. So you can make cryptic suggestions that the team is just regressing up to the mean in the last 3 matches, but statistically there is not enough evidence to accept that hypothesis. As the season goes on, we’ll see if Valentino gets better results how he has in his first 3 games. But the team under Pineda was not good enough, and I don’t believe any amount of time would have changed that.
I agree with your assessment of Pineda based on the large sample size. However, fwiw, I interpreted Klaus’s comment to refer to the sample size of the team’s performance under RV being too small to draw any meaningful conclusions. We’ll see if/when the size gets larger.
I think he’s trying to make the point that these results are mostly just regression to mean and likely not attributable directly to Valentino replacing Pineada. He’s probably right. Additionally, I’ll add that if this team had achieved the exact same results with Pineada still at the helm, the people talking about grit and desire or whatnot would be decrying lost points because of bad organization or tactics.
I love it:” regression to mean” meaning you were happy with Pineda’s lower vs upper or “mean” mediocrity? We need excellence. Fans don’t care about statistical spin. Fans care about wins and titles: only then will MB BECOME WHAT IT USED TO BE.
No. Regression to mean meaning that the team wasn’t as good as its start or as bad as the home losing streak.
Forget whether or not their goalie moved early, have you seen a worse pk? I know I’m a broken record here, but the slow walk / stutter PKs simply have to stop. A well hit PK at speed is unstoppable, the stutter nonsense is a disease that must be snuffed out
Agree. Terrible kick. Just wondering if the ref would’ve called for a re-take. Before the kick, my wife said: oh no, not him, he’ll miss it… and he did.
Probably one of the worst PKs I’ve ever seen from a professional – and I mean including freaking defenders taking them for winner-required games.
Keeper was definitely off the line. Would’ve been a retake if Rios hadn’t scored on the rebound.
Frankly, I turned it off after we gave up the goal as I was wiped and disappointed in what I saw. However, :), I love the result and the manner in which we played. If Thiarre and Rios were simply better then I think we could’ve won that game easily. Thiarre had some ghastly attempts at either hitting a last ball cross or a shot.
While I love that we’re picking up results under Rob V, there is no way we have consistent success without a true scoring threat.
I’m happy Poland has been eliminated and Slisz comes back, though I frankly don’t know if we need him with all of the midfield talent, but if Georgia advances, missing Saba hurts.
Let’s sign a striker and our club can compete.
Fortune had a fantastic game in midfield. Played strong defensively and his ball distribution was fantastic. He seemed like a completely different player.
Even though Rios had the goal, he was really poor. Cannot rely on him, if we want to make a late season push for the playoffs. So wasteful in front of goal.
It’s becoming increasingly important for us to get results on the road with all of our missed opps at home. 3 against a 12th place team (even on the road) would have been nice, but I’m certainly not upset with a point here all things considered – we had to wonder where the goals would come from with an attack made of mostly backups and little in the way of servicing, so a draw when we were down 1-0 around the hour mark is probably best case scenario.
One thought: Derrick Williams IS HIM. Gregersen is certainly huge when he’s available, but good Lord, Williams. What a massive upgrade he’s been over Miles who was never going to develop that gritty veteran leadership we’ve needed on the backline.
Williams and Greg signings at this point look like two of the best signings we’ve made in quite some time. They bring a serious level of quality and composure to our backline that had been missing for years. Our defensive record this year when they play speaks for itself.
Now, if we could only solve the offensive bit