Atlanta United rolled up I-85 to battle Charlotte FC in a matchday two derby featuring a handful of MLS’s newest headline attackers, notably Atlanta’s Latte Lath and Miguel Almiron, and Charlotte’s Wilfried Zaha. The ensuing result wasn’t what the Five Stripes wanted, as they left with a 2-0 loss exposed by another frustrating second half performance. It certainly feels like a missed opportunity considering the solid first half, but ultimately it was a tough day at the office. Here are the final whistle thoughts from the Queen City.
Adversity
Injuries, Klich having flu-like symptoms, the away-day atmosphere…the deck was well and truly stacked against the Five Stripes in this particular derby day. It’s not an excuse for the goals that were given up, though. This team gave up some silly moments and got punished. That sort of poor play has to be fixed, and asap, if Atlanta wants to have a shot at silverware in 2025.
Atlanta’s young Premier League killer wingback Matt Edwards
What a phenomenal match by the young right back. I know…people’s complaints are going to be on missing the header that led to the second goal, but it’s hard to put that entirely on Matt considering the multiple odd bounces the ball took on the pitch throughout the afternoon. Heading into this match, folks were unsure how well Edwards would be able to handle Charlotte’s shiny new Premier League winger Wilfried Zaha. In his 1v1’s, he put that garbage to bed quickly.
Matt Edwards quite literally outplayed Zaha on that flank, culminating in a first half chest bump/hip thrusting moment of trash talk when Matt forced Zaha out near the end line for a goal kick. This was vital, as it shut down Charlotte’s main game plan against Atlanta, which was to exploit the “inexperienced wingback against the Premier League attacker.” The game was truly a confidence builder for a player who has the athleticism to go very far in his career.
Again, I’m not knocking Matt for the silliness on that second goal, it was a comedy of errors from everyone.
Tale of two halves…again
What started as a very encouraging first half fell apart completely in the second. Atlanta had a flurry of sequences throughout the opening moments, where Miguel Almiron, Latte Lath, and Saba Lobjanidze all combined for some decent opportunities. They had the bulk of the xG, almost double Charlotte, and five times as many shots.
Then the second half happened. It didn’t take Charlotte long to start playing over the top, which caused Atlanta innumerable problems. And sometimes it’s just like that. Charlotte couldn’t make much happen playing through Atlanta’s midfield so they resorted to bombing the ball long and taking advantage of their home turf. Couple that with putting away a couple of chances and it was a solid day at the office for the home team.
Let us know down below what you thought of the match.
I’m going to say this until I’m blue in the face!! Getting a better keeper will fix A LOT of defensive issues! So many of our goals we let up are because Guz can no longer move! He stands on his touch line and doesn’t come off of it even if the cross is right in front of his face! Our CB’s are good! Guz might be good at directing people around. But unless the ball comes directly to him he’s not stopping shit! I NEED YALL TO STOP GLAZING HIM LIKE HES DOING SO MUCH! He has been brilliant in like 5 games in the last 3 years! But those 5 games don’t excuse the 30-40 goals he has given up in the 3 years that are directly his fault
The signs were quite clear in the 3-2 win over Montreal. We are defensively all over the place and not very good. It will improve when Lennon and Amador are back but even then it will still take more time for them to find their groove given how many new faces we have. There are a lot of tough games coming up and I fear that by the time things start to click we will be solidly mid table. Yes, this is MLS and it should still be easy to make the playoffs with this team, but we want better than good enough.
I’m reserving judgment about the team and the coach until we actually have our preferred starting XI on the pitch. Too many factors left to make brash decisions (ie people saying Miranchuk should be benched etc).
See how Tim Ream was able to open up the play for Zaha? Yeah, we had none of that from our backup-backs. Lennon and Amador will widen the play up dramatically, I think.
I am curious to see how the group rebounds and how we look against the Red Bulls
That game by ATL UTD was pathetic! The good thing is that it’s early on in the season and there is time for much needed improvement, so we don’t end up as the laughing stock of MLS this season by seasons end. However, I need to see more CONSISTENCY & EFFORT on both sides of the ball from this team and them act like they want to win the game especially when a game going forward will either be tied this season (or) we are down by 1 like we were early on during today’s match before the 2nd goal was scored (even though I understand that there will be some continued shuffling for awhile by Deila with the “Starting XI”) because right now we are playing too conservative and scared instead of taking every opportunity to push the ball forward and still playing from the back too much. Guz was the “MOTM” albeit in a losing effort in my opinion.
Guz being MOTM killed this whole thing for me! I agree with everything else you said! We are conservative and scared! Too many times I’m yelling at my screen. Just turn. And stop playing passes back every single damn time! However I don’t know people obsession with saying Guz is playing good!! He literally does nothing but stay and wait for things to happen to him and surprised when he can just go and get the ball! Half these goals are his fault because he doesn’t come out to clear any crosses!
It’s very early in the season – too early to draw conclusions. Don’t overreact
Agreed. I want to draw a bunch of conclusions, but it’s worthless to do so. We got handled today, we know what losing looks like with this group, we know what works and what doesn’t, time to work on it and fix it and improve.
Moving on to the next.
Miranchuk was invisible. Was he being crowded by Miggy? Maybe so, but in any event, Miranchuk didn’t try any deep passes and Latte was virtually forgotten
Tactically, we were unwatchable. I turned it off around the 80th minute… just so boring and disconnected. We have a ton of talent, but the team tactics aren’t sticking yet. I really hope things gel. So many missed passing opportunities, confusion as to whose defensive recovery ball was whose, really simple stuff. It felt like the midfield couldn’t connect the play between the forwards and back line. Bartosz and Fortune are both super talented, capable midfielders, but they were hung out to dry all game.
Generally speaking, we have a good team BUT unfortunately, there are several pretty good teams this year. Charlotte has a good defense and midfield; Redbulls do too and so does Miami, Philly, Columbus. Let’s hope we improve a lot
Better team won today but like I said a few weeks ago, it will be 6 to 8 weeks in before we really know what we’ve got. Guys have to gel (which I think we see some early signs of). And we need our proper fullbacks…Lennon and Amador. No disrespect to Edwards who is going to be really good, and who did a good job on zaha in the first half. But even this team performance today with Lennon and amador is probably a point.
Um… yeah. Tale of two halves, but it’s clear our defense is going to be our weakness this season (especially if we are missing one or more starters). We are going to need to score a lot of goals to win games on the road this year.
Not overly impressed, not overly disappointed. Asking a back-up (22 year old, Edwards) to cover a top DP attacker was never a recipe for a W on the road without our offense scoring at least 2 goals. Kind of predicted this one.
Completely agree. our defense is the weakness, but we knew that before the offseason even started, and I’m not overly worried about it yet. We had some good chances in the first half, that I think would’ve completely changed the game if we had got them in.
There were defensive lapses for sure…the first goal was general miss-shape though Edwards late getting back. The second goal clearly a misplay by Edwards but would also assign a little blame to Guz for paddy caking the first shot (that wasn’t that hard) back into the center of the box and then overreacting with happy feet literally putting himself inside the goal and off balance on the second shot. Different personnel could easily have turned that into a -1 or 0 defensive sheet. All that said, we scored zero goals and the attack looked anemic and predictable. So not sure I’d say the issue is entirely our defense. Will reserve judgment but Deila doesn’t particularly impress me…
To expand on my other comment, what’s up with this team and doing worse in the second half? It seems no matter who the coach is or the talent level on the team. Is it a negative aspect to our style of play? Is it having less mos career players?
I think they’re having to break out of some bad habits left over from years past. But Deila isn’t the kind of coach to let those habits linger for long.
That’s good to know! I’m pretty unfamiliar with soccer outside of Atlanta United but I’ve liked the things he’s said so far.
Do yall think this could be a potential problem with our new coach? I know it’s only one game but we totally got beat by half time adjustments and then the players themselves clearly gave up. Think about how many times you see the losing team spraying shots at the goal towards the end of the game. We subbed on fresh legs and I don’t think we had a single shot during stoppage time
I’m not worried about our coach. We are so evenly matched with Charlotte (though they have a better defense), this game was likely going to be come down to who scored first. Once Charlotte scored first, I knew the game would open up and our defense would likely make a mistake before our offense scored to tie it up… and that is actually what happened and they parked the bus on us.
It’s gonna take time for our team to trust playing quicker together, but we’ll get there. Today, the better team won.
Yea getting our fullbacks back will help.
No
Hard to ask any team that plays out of a 4 back system to play without your top 3 fullbacks is a tough ask.
That’s very true, and it’s just one Game just hate the whole collapsing late thing.