The good news for Atlanta United: It didn’t concede against the New York Red Bulls on Saturday night.
The bad news: it didn’t score, either.
That’s now back-to-back matches Atlanta hasn’t put the ball in the back of the net, the first time that’s happened since July 24 and 30, 2022. Of course, that season, it was ravaged by injury.
This season, with an attack that on paper was supposed to be one of the highest-scoring in MLS, it’s struggling to connect the dots.
“I think we played unbelievably good in (the first) half hour and I really enjoyed myself watching that,” Ronny Deila said after the match. “The next 60 minutes … that’s not good enough. That’s how it is.”
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Atlanta had seven shots on goal on the night to the Red Bulls’ zero. The problem was, just one of those shots on goal came in the second half, Edwin Mosquera’s weak odd-angle try on a sequence that appeared to have been offside any way. At the minimum, the match should have been 1-0 if not for a heroic save by Carlos Coronel on an attempt from Latte Lath, who had the ball served up beautifully by Matt Edwards.
Yet again, the Five Stripes were left wanting despite their looks at goal, a familiar refrain inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium, over, really, much of the past few years.
And, during his postmatch press conference, Deila exhibited more than a hint of frustration at his team’s over-reliance on long balls, especially in the second half, that ended up on the feet of Red Bull players.
“They want to win the game in one pass too many times,” he said. “That is hopefully something to recognize, and I hope everybody goes home and sees the game one more time, and learns from it, because that’s the only way to get better, not put it under the carpet.”
Atlanta will need to nip those tendencies in the bud — and quickly — as Inter Miami pays a visit next Sunday in one of the more anticipated matches of the early season slate. And that’s whether or not Lionel Messi plays.
But for all the disappointing moments from Saturday, Deila sees proof that better soccer is on the way for his group.
“We have to recognize why we are good, and then do that more, and keep on working in training with the things we are doing, and keep the intensity and the discipline in everything we do at a good level,” he said.
“I see what I see, and it’s details that can really show that we’re going to hard to play against.”
Pedro Amador returns
After missing all of preseason and the first two regular season games, Pedro Amador started for Atlanta on Saturday, playing the entirety of the match after missing the past number of weeks with a hamstring injury.
After a bit of a frightening moment in the first half that saw him favor his ankle after being tackled, Amador put in a strong shift, making a pair of excellent tackles in the second half to erase some would-be Red Bull chances.
“Very impressive. He hasn’t played for five, six months, and (to) go in and play 90 minutes, I think he played really well,” Deila said of the left back. “He gave us a dimension that we haven’t had.”
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My dear Atlantistas know quite well what I think.
And my Gremio just lost 0x2 to a better Inter, so, what is the meaning of life anyway.
And I have decided that a league without relegation is not a league. I have spoken.
SLAM needs ALMS.
What I keep seeing from this team is the inability to put in good passes and control the ball. Mis-touches, bad vision, and easy give-ups of the ball which never gives us the ability to control anything or even put together a decent attack. You saw a glimpse of what was possible in the first game, but the last 2 seemed to be lacking.
Defense only gets you so far, and i’m glad we have something solid (when they play together) but that midfield needs to step up and control the ball and distribute it but then the rest of the team needs to figure out how to link up play and control the ball.
The entire offense plays with a lack of composure. They tend to get the ball and try to go fast, but frankly without purpose, and then can’t execute clean give-and-go or other connections
I think the team starts out composed, and I think that is evident in the first half for the last two matches, but when we get into the 2nd half and we have no goals, the team starts rushing to make plays that isn’t there. I just think it takes time for the offense to gel. Just like Tata didn’t help us win the Cup in his first year, we just need to give it a little bit of time.
Just go look at the passing and the ball control. It’s like a few of them have 2 left feet at times. Bad first touches, horrible passes, and both were very apparent against the red bulls. We had a lot of good opportunities to destroy that back line and completely failed.
considering two of our four attacking players are left footed, i think having 2 left feet are a good thing 😛
I believe it’s 3 of our 4. Alexey, Saba, and Miggy.
Forgot about Saba. For some reason, I thought he was right footed
Everything says he’s left footed, but he takes his penalties and corners with his right.
lets just say Saba is both footed
He certainly has more of a right foot than Miggy 🙂
Part of the problem Saturday was the extra passing in close quarters in the penalty area (trying to be unselfish perhaps?) – which led to turnovers. That said, the passing between SLAM has improved, and likely will get better over time. The addition of Pedro helped.
While it is not an excuse, it should be noted that NYRB played some of the most negative football we’ve seen in a while. Honestly, it has been years since we have seen a team come into the Benz and play so intentionally negative. Reassuring to see respect again from the opponent.
I have a bad feeling we’ve been bamboozled by Garth again.
For what its worth, not that I expect to change anyones mind (especially given I hope Im wrong), but heres my logic.
RE second half struggles:
Im willing to accept that not all starters are fully fit. What Im not willing to accept is that after 2 games, it seems like its still a struggle to get through 90 minutes. I dont mind not being as crisp with lesser players, but its concerning to me how flat we’ve been. I fear that we’ve been getting outcoached in the second half.
RE squad improvements:
I’m super excited for the talent we have. But its not always enough to have talent. That talent has to be able to play together. And theres shared responsibility for this. The players have to trust the manager. The manager has to actually be able to manage. And the FO has to select players that are capable at playing above the sum of their parts. So maybe its just “taking time”. But Im concerned its more than just not having enough time to gel. Considering how we dont have that many new players, we should be figuring that out more quickly relative to other teams in my opinion.
I just think you are expecting too much from a team that is only 3 matches in. Especially when one of our key signing literally only played part of one match during preseason and he was also hurt right before coming over to Atlanta. We were definitely not good out of the gate when Tata was managing. Deila has a tougher job because he has to break the bad habits from our previous bad management. It just seems like a lot of the people don’t have enough patience anymore after the repeated failures from Boca and co. You can start freaking out after midseason.
I think my expectations are actually lower than most people here. My comment is more geared towards half of the staff writers (and seemingly half the fans) that think this setup is an MLS Cup contending side.
I dont expect to see it all come together in weeks 1-3, but I think we’ve put the cart before the horse bigtime, and it seems like a slog for 4th in the east is much more realistic based on what we’ve seen so far.
And sadly, we should view that as a tremendous improvement rather than a disappointment.
He’s saying we should play *less* Route 1 soccer? When we have the speed of ELL? We just need to be better at making those long ball passes, not make less of them, IMHO. I really don’t want to see more of the back-passing – recycling along the backline – hoping something opens up that we’ve seen the past few years. Please, God, I hope Deila isn’t one of those coaches who lives and dies (mostly the latter) by their “system”.
Nah, Deila has explicitly stated from the very first game in Chattanooga that he wants less passing backwards. We’ll have a bit more on the site this week describing in detail what he meant, but he was more so implying that they needed to stop playing so frantically, keep control, and make better decisions.
Agree. Believe he wants to move the ball quickly from back to front, but with more intention. The aimless long ball turnovers were frustrating. We had plenty of time to do something on most occasions as well.
I do agree with you. We are NOT capitalizing on his speed up front. The quick transitions aren’t happening.
ATL needs to figure out whether you want to be a pressing team or a team that sits back, can’t be both. Players get tired mentally and physically which shows the end product decline as the match goes on. While I think SLAM should help out defensively (to some extent), they shouldn’t have to go all the way into their own box to defend and then have to go up and press. Takes too much out of them and doesn’t put any of them in the favorable positions.