Atlanta United’s attack cost a fortune, but it can’t buy goals

After adding an MLS legend and a record-breaking signing to its front four, many expected Atlanta United’s nearly $50 million attack to bury its opponents in goals. However, after its first three games, the Five Stripes have just three goals and have been shut out in its last two matches.

Is it time to panic yet? No, not quite. After all, three games, including a visit to the best defense in the Eastern Conference and hosting the MLS Cup runner-up, is a very small sample size. But if the Five Stripes are going to live up to the expectations that they’ll be among the top dogs in the East this season, they have to figure out how to find the back of the net. Preferably sooner rather than later.

So what has gone wrong for Atlanta United in its opening games of 2025? There are multiple factors, but here are the top three that stood out after a rewatch of all 270 minutes of competitive soccer that the team has played in 2025 thus far.

Players too far apart

One of the great things about talking to head coach Ronny Deila postgame is that he goes very in-depth on his explanation when asked tactical questions. After the 3-2 win over CF Montreal in the season opener, he discussed some of the issues he perceived in the attack when answering a question about Miguel Almiron’s first game back with Atlanta United.

“We didn’t give enough support to each other. We had too big distance and then when he [Almiron] gets the ball, then there’s not so many to play to.”

Upon reviewing footage from the games, I started seeing what he was referring to. Some of you might remember the post I wrote three months ago analyzing Ronny Deila’s tactics when he was first announced. In that piece, I explained that his system places a heavy emphasis on playing wide, creating overloads and using switches of play to exploit space on the wings. A major aspect of this is creating numbers advantages on the ball side of the field, which can’t happen if the players stay as spread apart as they have been in the past few games. Let me show you what I mean with one of Atlanta’s more promising attacks against New York Red Bulls.

This play starts on the left and is switched to the right once the team identified that there was space on that side. This is fine, but what starts to create issues is how far apart the players are on that side. Matt Edwards is preparing to run down the flank to create an overload before sending a low cross into the box, but even with him arriving the team doesn’t have a numbers advantage against the Red Bulls.

Meanwhile, Saba Lobjanidze and Emmanuel Latte Lath are on the other side of the box, but Atlanta really needs at least one of them to go to the right and solidify control with a 5v4. This would allow the Five Stripes to outnumber the Red Bulls inside their own box and make it more likely that Edwards can find a teammate with his cross.

But Latte Lath instead heads for the back post while Saba decides to slowly meander over and here’s what the play looks like when Edwards sends his cross into the box.

The Red Bulls’ defense has created a box of four players in front of Edwards with no really good options to find teammates until Alexey Miranchuk jumps in to receive the ball and nudges forward a weak shot, which Coronel easily saves.

This is an example of the “too big distances” that Deila was referring to. Because the passing options are too far from the ball carrier in and around the box, it makes it easier for the opposition defense to just block the passing lanes and force them to make a suboptimal decision. I’ll also nitpick that Almiron should probably be following the play into the box instead of just setting up Edwards and backpedaling away from the box. That certainly didn’t help with the whole numbers advantage shebang.

Here’s another example, this time from the Montreal match, of there being too much space between the players in attack.

First of all, can we take a moment to admire that SUBLIME touch from Latte Lath to set up Miggy? Full credit for that!

But all credit revoked for what he did immediately after, which was make a run into the box OPPOSITE Almiron. This left the Paraguayan star completely isolated with ZERO passing options, forcing him to try and make something happen on his own. Had Latte Lath bent his run to go closer to Almiron, he could have played him into space around the defender and that likely leads to a very good opportunity. I mean, just imagine if instead of being where he is in this frame, he’s somewhere in that red circle… oh, what could have been…

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Where’s the space?

The second frequent issue that I noticed for Atlanta going forward was the difficulty the players had in identifying space that they could exploit. This is vital to moving the attack upfield quickly and finding options to link up with teammates in the final third. Let’s take a look at this example from the Red Bulls game where Atlanta wins the ball back and has a break in transition.

Tristan Muyumba wins the ball back, passes it to Miranchuk and the Five Stripes are off to the races with Latte Lath, Saba and Miggy all rushing forward. In the situation that Miranchuk was in when he received the ball, the only logical option was a pass to Almiron, which he did. The issue that arises is what he does immediatley after: he just runs besides two opposing defenders for five whole seconds instead of dropping back into the rather large pocket of space behind him.

This goes hand-in-hand with the issue of players becoming isolated: if the other players fail to find space where they can be made open for the player on the ball, then that player has no choice but to figure it out on their own. That usually doesn’t lead to a desireable outcome. Oh, and that problem is much worse when this lack of awareness comes from your No. 10 (ie: the most creative player on the field).

Alright, I spent that last example criticizing Miranchuk, so, to balance out my karma, I’ll now throw him some flowers with a play later in the game that for a solid three seconds had me believing we would finally see Latte Lath chase after a Miranchuk throughball.

WHOOOAAAA!!! DID YOU SEE THAT???!!!! Hold on, replay it real quick. Go on.

First off, the pass from Bartosz Slisz is inch-perfect, and then Miranchuk recieving with the spin move is just *chef’s kiss*.

Of course, it didn’t end up mattering because Latte Lath signals for Miranchuk to play him in between the defenders before switching to run the other way at the last second. Huge bummer, but we’re getting really close to those two putting it together. When they do, it’s gonna be awesome.

Anyways, one of the key things to take from this play is that Miranchuk actually did identify the space and ran into it to receive the ball from Slisz. To be fair, I’d expect this connection to be more developed than the one Miranchuk has with Latte Lath. Miranchuk and Slisz have been playing together for about seven months now including a full preseason, while Latte Lath has only trained with the team for three weeks. That connection will develop with time.

There is such a thing as being too direct

After the 2-0 win over Birmingham Legion in preseason, I asked Deila if he’d seen an improvement in the team being more direct – one of his chief complaints about the team’s performance in their 2-1 loss to Chattanooga FC the week prior. Here’s what he said:

“Yeah, but we need more. More forward passing because the front has to be more available… We have so much quality forward. It’s also coming even more quality in from new players, so we need to get that ball as quick as possible to these guys.”

Well, the team gave him what he asked for against the Red Bulls… a little too much of it. In the second half alone Atlanta blasted forward a whopping 16 long balls, most of which ended in turnovers. Here’s his analysis of what the team was overcomplicating in the match:

“They want to win the ball, win the game in one pass too many times. We play too straight… instead of let them go, switch the play, get more players up, push up the team after so we are in balance… Start to play some simple passes: play to center back, center back, full back, play it back again one more round and then we will get good opportunities. Every time was forward.”

The team was now trying to play too direct, and it was killing any chance of the Five Stripes putting together a cohesive attack in the second half of the game. The panicked long balls that the team frequently blasted forward hoping that Latte Lath, Saba or Miggy would run onto them ended up being easily cleaned up by the opposing defenders. Not only was it not producing anything going forward, but it was WILLINGLY handing over the ball unnecessarily.

This constant lobbing the ball forward makes it impossible for the fullbacks to get forward and create the overloads on the wings that Deila’s system demands. The team needs to have more patience on the ball to piece together the sequences of passes that lead this team into good areas from which it can create scoring chances.

A couple of other things to think about…

The second halves

Here is a representation of Atlanta United’s performance in competitive matches in 2025 thus far.

It starts off great! Dominating in shots, putting together eye-catching sequences, and looking like potentially one of the best teams in the league. Then they become possessed by the 2017 Atlanta Falcons and completely fumble the second half (sorry for the reference). Editor’s note: “GDI Henry”

Part of the reason the attack — and by proxy the overall performance —suffers is because the team just can’t keep it together in the second halves of games. Especially when they’re either behind or tied in the second half it seems like they feel panicked and the tactics go completely out the window. It’s come to the point where teams have started realizing that all they have to do is hold strong in the first half because Atlanta will implode on its own in the second.

This mostly comes down to a mental issue that Deila briefly touched on after the Red Bulls game:

“Then we need leadership. Then we need, you know, everybody understand and recognize what’s happening… not hide and go into your shell.”

The team is getting back one of the leaders in the squad with Brooks Lennon coming back, so that should help in that regard.

The No. 10 dilemma

If you check Atlanta United Twitter, Reddit, Discords or really any form of social media, chances are you’ve run into a debate that is starting to crop up of who should play the central attacking midfield position. Right now it’s held by Alexey Miranchuk with the idea of him being the through ball artist that feeds the other three pacey attackers.

However, there’s another player on the squad right now who played that position during the club’s most successful years. Oh, and he played in the best league in the world for six years after that. But instead of being at the No. 10, Miguel Almiron has lined up at right wing — his most-played position at Newcastle — with the freedom to cut and roam inside.

Now, you might think that having these two playing together in midfield would be a good thing, but instead, it creates an imbalance in the team as the right side has one less player. This makes it harder for the team to switch the play on the attack and it limits the options for exploiting space (instead of having the choice between playing in an attacker left, right and center, you only have left and center).

Furthermore, I’ve started noticing that Almiron and Miranchuk can frequently start getting in each other’s way when they occupy the same spaces. This has become a problem.

Here’s MLS Season Pass Studio Analyst Sacha Kljestan discussing a possible solution on our latest show.

Whether it’s Almiron or Miranchuk at the 10, the other needs to stay on the wing to avoid this problematic overlap. There are certainly arguments for both, but if the goals don’t start coming, maybe a change is in order.