Another Leagues Cup, another group stage exit for Atlanta United. A rather dull draw between Atlanta and lowly Santos Laguna saw Santos move to the knockout stage after winning the resulting penalty shootout 5-3. Here are some thoughts from Sunday’s contest:
Listless and uninspiring
Santos Laguna hadn’t won a match since March 9 and entered the day with just one goal scored in their league campaign. Atlanta United are awaiting the arrival of a new No. 10 (Alexey Miranchuk) and No. 9 (TBD).
When those factors come together, inevitably you are in for some rough football, and that’s exactly what we got throughout the afternoon. Both teams lacked sharpness in their attack and were wasteful in possession at critical moments. For Atlanta’s part, they had the chance to come out as the aggressor against a struggling side and failed to do so, which is sadly a common occurrence with this group.
Even after a testy exchange in the second half that saw a player from each side get shown red cards — until they were rescinded after a check of Video Review — added a little edge to an otherwise dreary affair, the story had a similar ending for Atlanta.
Great bounceback performance from Josh Cohen
Josh Cohen had a night to forget for Atlanta United last Friday against D.C. Against Santos Laguna, he wasn’t perfect, but he didn’t have nearly the number of mistakes he made in the first group stage match. That was highlighted by a massive save in the second half that denied Santos an opener.
Every player has their down matches, but it was up to Cohen to bounce back from his showing against D.C. United. Largely, he did just that.
Atlanta United didn’t deserve to win
It’s been clear for a while, but this team just has too many holes right now. Even if they had taken care of business against Santos Laguna, it’s unlikely they would have made a sustained run in the tournament.
Atlanta won’t play another MLS match until August 24 at the LA Galaxy. Their next home match isn’t until September 14 against Nashville SC. By the 24th, they’ll almost certainly have Miranchuk in the fold and potentially a new No. 9 (or attacker). Hopefully those two additions can turn this team back in the right direction, but Sunday was another reminder of how far they’ve fallen.
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Hate to say it but that starting team is our strongest. Disgusting how far this club has fallen.
Absolutely no midfield presence both going forward or covering for the defense. A couple of signings will not solve this mess.
Pineda has been gone two months, what is keeping the replacement? In the EPL a new manager is appointed within a week or 10 days. If we didn’t see this change coming with a 1 point per game average in 2024 then the front office team is brain dead and needs to move on also.
Looking at the MLS app over the last week, AU doesn’t even get a mention. We are irrelevant. Comment below makes the comparison to the Thrashers, I can see this team moving to another market.
Because, despite the perception and wishful comments, big managers don’t get swayed with fancy training facility and garish stadium and the only folks who think Atlanta is a big draw are people from Atlanta, which is a little ironic given the traffic, etc.
It’s just not nearly as big a job as some think which given the current trajectory will be an issue for the club signing-wise when the fan response is “who”? or at least “hmm”. From the potential candidate’s perspective, for the bigger names, you’re talking about having to convince a millionaire and his family to move from say Europe to Georgia and that is often not an easy sell.
This will have a cascading effect in terms of new player acquisitions as the timeline gets pushed out or even worse, if the DPs are signed before the new manager is in place.
None of this is surprising.
Agree with you. We haven’t been able to hold onto any DPs or good players in the last few seasons. What manager would come to this mess? Cancelled my ST renewal today.
So you never were a club supporter, just a supporter of a winning club. Got it.
I think on Sunday you saw the extent of hard core supporters. Don’t see how anyone else would go to see them play.
It would be different if this were still an ambitious club. It isn’t. Blank has moved on. He probably doesn’t even watch the matches on TV,, much less attend at the Benz. Garth has been very open about being pragmatic. That means being conservative and not spending money. This is a club that once hired Tata Martino, then Frank de Boer, both well known around the world. Now they are giving Valentino an audition.
I’ll probably review mine, I like my seats, but I know I could go to every match I want to and spend way less. And I go to every match, even that crap last night.
And Tata in effect left for reasons noted above after notching his big win and FdB was effectively run out of town by vocal fans who sided with a few toxic players. So, assuming even some top third tier names have preliminary interest, wonder what those reference calls sound like…
Firing a borderline world class coach after one winning season (where we won a tournament) and 5 games into the next season after a pandemic turned sports in their heads was a mistake.
I feel like I remember FdB’s tenure so differently from these comments.
Like, I know the team won trophies in 2019, but it took a team revolt shifting from FdB’s preferred style towards a style closer to 2018 for the team to feel as dominant as they did in 2018 and make those tournament runs.
After then in 2020, between FO shipping out most of the core 2018 team and Josef getting hurt, the team goes scoreless in MLS is Back and FdB gets fired or chooses Netherlands job depending on who you ask. In retrospect, here I can see an argument that things were kind of harsh on FdB, especially if we considered him being fired. But I also don’t really see compelling evidence that he and the FO at the time would have turned things around if given more time. Especially if you look at FdBs manager tenures other than Ajax.
I also am biased because FdB feels like the logical start of the possession with no intent to score woes that have plagued this team.
Would you trade those results for the crap on the field now?
Of course anyone would trade the results of 2019 over today. But the question is FdB was really that crucial for that run? Or the question is FdB with today’s roster or even a future better roster would lead to those similar types of success?
I can agree that if you view FdB as being fired, that it was probably an unfairly quick decision.
And I can give you 2019 we definitely improved our Defense. But disagree on we had to re-invest ourselves to a slower possession based style. The team literally revolted over that and when they switched closer to 2018 style is when they were dominant offensively. And Josef’s run was great. But a chunk of it was just him single-handledly creating an opportunity as opposed to consistent team strategy.
I also find the Results > Style comment to not really make sense in relation to FdB and our current results because all of our current results have been from styles closer to FdB than not. A lot of people (at least now) would obviously say Results > Style, but that actually implies that the supposed lesser style you are using gets you consistent results, which just has not been the case with this team.
Ultimately, again while I agree that he was probably fired too early, I just don’t get the view that FdB was going to turn things around with that 2020 team and that FO. The players were not happy playing for him (hopefully remembering correctly that this was even said by Larentowicz on a podcast), FdB has never succeeded anywhere not named Ajax, and the FO shipped off the core 2018/2019 team and replaced them with sub-standard to awful players. And to be fair to FdB, I think the FO at that time was the real issue, and that no coach who didn’t have player say (which FdB clearly had no power given that he didn’t even realize we were selling Gressel) was going to fix the issues that have arisen from 2020 on.
Yeah, I think all that makes sense.
My only thing is I’m still not sure if FdB’s style really got those results. That 2019 was so stacked, that I think they just made up for the weaknesses of that style. But, given that 2020 was such a mess from FO, plus FdB not really getting a chance, there is no real definitive evidence to that point.
Man. I forgot about Brek Shea. I was thinking of the albatross if Jurgen Damm’s contract plus Emerson Hyndman. Or that guy in the MLS is Back who immediately got red carded.
I had hopes when we fired Pineda. Then, between Rob Valentino not showing the same team improvement after Heinze was fired, and the FO showing ow completely unprepared they were to get a new manager, I have more or less descended into apathy.
How about this? You’re a prospective player based anywhere in the world beside maybe North America and you have this opportunity to go to a newer club in The U.S with big time aspirations, a roster of up and comers mainly from South America on their way to Europe and are told the coach is Frank (Netherlands, Ajax, etc) or Pineda (beg pardon?).
Don’t discount that.
Even if you fire Frank and the other guy, already forgetting, you don’t follow that up with an unknown MLS assistant and then follow that up with auditioning an even more unknown MLS assistant.
Gabriele. Heinze.
In any case.
You are arguing a point I never even talked about. All I have been saying is that I don’t agree to the good view of FdB’s performance given that a took a team revolt before those trophy runs. I do agree we fired him too early in 2020, and we have no idea if he could have turned it around. I suspect he wouldn’t have, though more to the FO’s decisions then his actual performance.
But to address it, what is the point of being a big name that can attract talent if you aren’t winning? And the assistant talk has always been illogical to me. If we say results are the most important, than we should go for the manager that gets us that. Yes, a big name coach can give you a better chance of bringing in big name players, which gives you a better chance of winning. But just being a former assistant isn’t an automatic no, given the success of Nancy or Noonan, or even a relative no-name coach, if you look at the path of someone like Cherundalo or Schmetzer. So whoever the front office hires, I’ll judge them from whatever the team looks like when they get here.
Stupid comment. For five years we haven’t come remotely close to any success. This should not be tolerated in any ambitious organization. In Europe there would be match day protests in the stadium and streets with calls for replacing the board.
My patience has run out and not willing to keep investing financially for zero emotional return. Club is at a low and current management have a losing mentality. Don’t see it improving soon.
We’ll agree to disagree. Yes it hasn’t been good but they are “My team” and I’ll go when possible, win or lose. The amount of vindictive thrown out because they haven’t met “fan expectations” is laughable. I’ll apologize if it seems like I’m trying to tell you how to spend your money. But I’m there for my team good/bad/ugly. Because, from my view point, that is what a supporter does.
Anyone who supported this team for any length of time has been through far more lows than highs. Yes there were fair weather fans who immediately jumped ship in 2020 once the hype wore off and we hit our first struggles, but most of us have been here through the implosion that occurred from 2019-2020; The failed rebuild in 2021; the bandaid overpriced underperforming signings; the injury-riddled/underperforming 2022 season; and the 2023 season giving us rays of hope at the end that were brought crashing down instantly in 2024.
This team has been 2 years of the FO striking gold somehow despite the personnel in charge then never again showing that ability, 4 years of awful decision making destroying everything built on the field, and 2 more years of results just not showing up despite new leadership and more sustainable decision making.
On the field, it’s been 2 years of good results (2017-18), 1 year of good results and self-destructive tendencies (2019), 1 year of ok but frustrating results (2023), and 4 years of getting probably the worst value per dollar spent in the entire league.
Honestly you have to be a bit of a masochist to support this team still, they always get your hopes up and then disappoint you in ways that were never thought possible.
For context, I have supported Arsenal for 40+ years through thick and thin. Even through some very lean years I never had the same sense of hopeless incompetence I have about AU.
My apologies for being rude above. I understand the frustration.
I saw a quote from Garth that the new manager definitely wouldn’t be hired until after the end of the season. Agree, I don’t understand why it should take that long. Especially when his other statement is that they aren’t giving up on this season.
AUFC is not going to anywhere. Since the team owner owns the stadium, the team will remain.
Yeah, and AU prints money for AB. No chance it is relocated.
I agree it won’t be relocated – or probably won’t – but I guarantee you this club is making nothing like the money it used to make. Is love to see his face when he sees last night’s concessions take.
I don’t think AB cares much about concession income from the stadium, since he gets a cut of the Atlanta motel tax for infinity to cover maintenance costs for the stadium. That’s why the prices are low – he can break even or even take a loss on the concessions easily as the tax revenue he continues to get will more than make up for it.
If the STH base dries up and suites don’t get bought, that will get his attention.
Yeah, the idea that a five-figure dip in concession sales from a one-off game is going to move the needle for Arthur Blank is laughable. I doubt he even gets that data. Even if the club merely breaks even every year, he’s still making money as the valuation of the club has soared since he bought into MLS. Now, I do think a drop in ticket sales would be a red flag that something is now very wrong. But that’s a much bigger marker than reacting to a single game that is of dubious origin.
Yes, one match would be laughable. I can tell you, admittedly anecdotal from every home match but one this season, the crowds are smaller, lines are minuscule. I wouldn’t say bad concession sales are a backbreaker, but they are certainly an indicator.
If the tickets are already sold and you’re trying to gauge how your business is doing what other indicators would you use?
I’d look at ST renewals and walk-up ticket sales, plus merchandise.
Fwiw, per Forbes in 2023, Atl Utd’s revenue in 2022 was $81million and operating income (note not profit) was $6mil. I would presume that includes their share of MLS revenue.
Going out on a limb I’ll guess revenue has dropped significantly since 2022 and operating income is likely in the red and set to drop dramatically in 2025.
That said, guys like AMB don’t buy sports franchises for profit. They do it for prestige. Not that they like losing money. But I can guarantee you he barely thinks about losing tens of millions a year on Atl Utd.
For context, that Falcons are worth 5x with revenue close to half a billion annually and operating income around $150mil.
What he likely does care more about is legacy, building a brand and franchise over the long term. With that kind of mindset and time horizon, losing money in a planned fashion and even enduring stretches of losing seasons don’t necessarily shift the targets much for folks like that.
The fact that the team has made some very short-sighted decisions suggests that he is likely minimally involved with Atl Utd. Maybe attends some quarterly meetings and fancy events but he’s not providing much management input outside of organizational philosophy and culture and that’s likely pretty hands off.
He’s all falcons, all the time.
Agree with this – he cares very much about his legacy, especially at this late point in his life.
We don’t have access to that, at least I don’t. So I’ll stick with the anecdotal evidence of smaller crowds and no lines of concessions. Or bathrooms for that matter.
What is it about Atlanta sports teams being trash. (Maybe the Braves are an exception and UGA isn’t Atlanta based).
With the fan base this franchise has/had it was a dynasty in the making. I will keep poking my head in now and then but the soccer is just awful.
UGA was pretty trash too pre-Kirby
Trash? They weren’t winning back to back national championships, but they were top 20 pretty much every year. Nowhere close to this level of trash.
Agree. If UGA football was trash, Tech football was was a steaming pile of diarrhea. UGA went from very good to elite with Kirby.
Mark Richt’s UGA squads never got over the Alabama hurdle, but calling them trash is just dumb. They averaged 10 wins a season.
Old money and prestige doesn’t exist in the same way in the south
We suuuuuccckkkk.
Are there penalty kick stats out there? I watch other teams take penalties and they are amazing! Our penalty kicks?!? Well, garbage. I hear the team practices them all the time. Hard to imagine how bad they’d be if they didn’t practice.
Just have Saba take them from now on.
Sharpness was lacking big time. How many stumbles, fumbles, or missteps were there!?! Wow!
I didn’t renew my season tickets. I can’t stomach this right now. I’ll pick and choose my games.
A wise decision. You can buy tickets for $10. Tonight you might have found them for five. And you don’t get stuck with tickets you don’t want to use.
Oh, they have a “waiting list” for season tickets. So be very worried you’ll be left out of the “excitement.”
Remember Atlanta thrashers? This team’s on the way to that.
Weirdly, despite the stadium being empty, tickets didn’t drop below ~15-20. I think most STHs opted out so there weren’t many resales
They don’t want to set the precedent of marches being cheaper if you wait/ don’t get season tickets.
Penalties: my wife and I played a game the last two matches. I was able to tell her where 20% of the opposing teams kicks were going; just by looking at the player stance, distance to ball and approach before contact with ball
Too bad Saba can’t take them all in a shootout.
Nil nil draw? Garth was right.
We are back, baby!
Look. It was a bad game. But Garth promoting a guy that literally doesn’t have his visa yet had zero relevance to it.
Which is exactly why what he said was dumb and continues to rub me the wrong way.
We clearly arent “back.”
We are on the same page. I respect leaders who do not engage in worthless talking. Give me results. I’m losing faith in Garth.
Lagerway has been here less than a year. Jesus Christ on a pogo stick. Step back from the ledge people.
I think he did say, in not so many words, that there would be pain while we took 3-4 cycles to reset the roster. We are definitely in the pain throes right now. But for him to say “we’re so back, baby” after the signing was ridiculous cheerleading.
Hasn’t he been here since the start of 2023? He’s been here a year and a half, nearing on two.
My issue in starting to more permanently lose interest isn’t so much the rebuild, it’s that we were supposed to start seeing results of the rebuild at this point. The deadline to “things are back” keeps getting pushed out. Players that were supposed to be the foundation of something new are arguably underperforming, so I’m no longer at the point of blindly trusting that whoever Garth brings in will be good.
Yeah. Okay. 18 months. Still incredibly early to be bailing on him. If you thought the roster rebuild was going to be done in two windows you were always dreaming.
Then Garth should not have said the roster would be fixed in 2-3 windows.
Well, now I’ve become an optimistic, since being pessimistic is bad for my Karma (and my well being) But we are playing better, on the other hand, our deficiencies are also becoming clearer. Need a DP at goal (or slightly below) need a RB and LB (top MLS level); need a DP level midfielder; DP level attacking mid (we’ll see how the new guy does) DP level striker and best MLS level winger. To me the DP could be the striker or the winger but I would prefer a winger due to how MLS defenses operate by clogging the middle.
I feel pretty good about our player acquisition strategy under Garth. Im certainly not bailing on him. Moreso frustrated that the club continues to opt for false positivity with its fans in an attempt to prop up the business side of things.
Its just borderline insulting to think we are that stupid.
What do expect them to do? Tell people not to buy tickets?
I’m es complicated by firing our coach when we did. Because now we have to develop a new system with a new coach, then field a talented team
Garth has been here since November 2022. Coming up on two years. Your timeline is completely wrong. When he came into the job, he said he needed two to three windows to get the roster right. Now he says he needs another 2-3 windows to be the roster right. Then last week he says “We are bad, BABY!”
Our roster was good at the start of the year, our coach wasn’t. Then we had to sell players that were starting to lose interest and belief in the club, plus injuries. We’re lucky we got anything out of GG
The ball movement, runs, and positioning all looked to be an improvement but the finish and control just wasn’t there. Very few chances too…it’s hard to rate this, but it’s also hard to stay down on them. One thing is clear, penalties aren’t our strength.
Didn’t bother watching for all the reasons I’ve mentioned before, but curious how attendance was. I know we didn’t pay for our seats, but was it full or empty?
It looked really empty on TV.
It’s looked “not full” before, but I can’t emphasize enough how empty it looked on TV. I’m not even confident there were 4-digits in seats at kickoff in the lower level.
Hopefully the league and the FO are taking notice
If the full capacity is 41k, my guess is there were 10-12k max. Probably closer to 10. Not good.
I was there with literally hundreds of others. Attendance sucked, as it should. Doug Tweeted that “attendance” was 29k. I’d say actual was around 15k.
I was there. There were entire sections completely empty. I mean completely. Not one person. I have photographic proof.
The suites were also all empty.
Perfect storm of shitty team and shitty tournament and giving season ticket holders opportunity to opt out of this shit game and casual fans not even being aware of it. Perfect storm, nobody there, but suckers like me, and about 13,000 others.
Small club.
I was there. My daughter and I were literally the only people in our entire row. And that was pretty representative of how the rest of the stadium looked. There were more people there than there were for the one against DC though.
Your last thoughts are mine as well.
Who were the folks suggesting the team had way too much talent to be underperforming? Must have been the TA and GG departures. At least things are more stable now, attendance has probably gone up since firing GP, the guy who knew far less than the average fan. It does make you wonder, RV must be an even more terrible coach to not be able to implement some basic fan suggestions when it mattered. All he had to do was some screaming in the locker room, I thought…get players to be “accountable”. Hopefully ATL can get a good angry manager who can teach the pros some basic passing and non pinching maneuvers.
Side note, glad to see Argentina bumped from the Olympics. What a bunch of cry babies. Sounds like maybe a little bigoted as well. The US loss was embarrassing but not a surprise. The fact is fan expectations far exceed the talent there as well, varsity USMNT included. It is amusing that somehow because we have more European pros, people believe they are a good team. With GB they likely had a 15% chance of making into the WC quarterfinals. Substitute the best coach who’d be willing to take the job, 17%. Substitute the best coach on earth who wouldn’t want the headache, the probability increases to 22%.
Personally I think the club should just allow the most vocal fans to coach the rest of the season if not also maybe suit up. At least there would be more comic relief. Though losing to Santos is a little funny.
What’s your point? You think we should have kept Pineda?
The match was as discombobulated and diso as anyone here might say. No one from the bac line through the strikers were ever really on the same page. That can be explained by players who don’t know each other and have never played together in any meaningful way. But it’s also a black eye on Valentino. They had a lot of time to prepare the men they had for this game. They did not.
The squad needs obvious help on the front line.
I will be positive about this game: no goals given; no stupid mistakes; GK did ok; ball is moving faster; Fortune played his best game; Saba is the man; defense looked good
My primary takeaway from yesterday was the raw number of times a pretty good pass or cross was delivered to an area where the finisher was not running. The number of times the striker or attacking player held up their hands saying “I was going here not there!” Was stunning.
100% correct. If GL thought maybe the next coach was already here, this game should completely disabuse him of that notion.
We didn’t deserve to win, but we could have. Cohen was better but not that good. He is not the answer for post-Guzan. Finishing was non-existent. Hopefully, adding a 9 and a 10 will fix some of that. Center ref was mostly horrible again. Honestly, I am glad we do not have a game for several weeks.
Is this team demonstrably better since Lagerway has been here?? I’m not seeing it, even without two DP they should not be this inept and boring
I know. And Garth is trying to take the easy way out on that one by giving Valentino an audition. I’ll tell you, if he gets the job, we will have learned everything we need to know about this regime. What a complete pile of shit.
If we can’t beat a team with one goal scored all year at home, we are are not “so back baby!”, we are terrible.
No coach, no cohesion, no identity, no scorers, no plan, no chance.