Atlanta United hasn’t won on the road at Yankee Stadium in six and a half years. That streak did not end tonight. Not even close.
Ronny Deila rolled out a rotated squad due to the effects of international duty travel and a lengthy injury list in his personal return to Yankee Stadium. Thiare and Saba started the match up top, while Will Reilly joined the midfield after a good showing against NYCFC’s second team in MLS Next Pro. In defense, Derrick Williams was the only natural centerback with Hernandez and Edwards alongside him.
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Controversy appeared again for Atlanta United this season, this time in the 14th minute as Jamal Thiare went down after contact from NYCFC keeper Tomas Romero while chasing down a long ball. After a lengthy review, referee Sergii Boiko decided not to award a penalty, much to the dismay of the folks joining us for the watch party at Sababa’s Burgers.
The questionable refereeing didn’t stop there, as Derrick Williams headed home a corner in the 38th minute before the assistant referee raised his flag for offside. Jamal Thaire was in an offside position at the back post, but didn’t seem to interfere with the positioning of the goalkeeper or impact the shot. Regardless, the match continued on scoreless.
That is, until minutes later, when Brooks Lennon became the latest in a list of Atlanta United players to make an individual blunder leading to a goal for the opposition. A backpass at the top of the 18 fell right at the feet of Hannes Wolf, who played it over for Maxi Morales to put easily past Brad Guzan for the lead just before the half in a brutal sequence of events.
Things weren’t much better ten minutes into the second half, as Monsef Bakrar smashed home a first time finish to double NYCFC’s lead. And then it got worse.
Hannes Wolf scored twice in the next five minutes to make it four-nil to the hosts all before the hour mark in an indecribably humilating and demoralizing span for Atlanta United. I’ll spare y’all from posting the highlights but trust, it was bad.
Thankfully, Atlanta has a two week break to recover from whatever the hell that was. The Five Stripes will be back in action on June 25th as they visit the Columbus Crew.
I only come here in the hope of learning that Atlanta has hired a good coach. No such luck, the wait goes on.
And we were even wearing the GOOD kits. Hey, other than that 15 minute stretch…
Yeah, we stink.
I listened to the game while on the treadmill. Based on how Mike and Jason were describing it we were in pretty good attacking form from about 15 minutes in. Had the no PK call and dubious offside but were playing well. Then the awesome centering cross by Brooks Almiron or Miguel Lennon , I can’t remember. The team then is destroyed mentally and limps into half. I finish my workout , sit in the sauna , and shower. Head out to the car expecting to hear it being 0-1 or 1-1 with 25 minutes to go. I was not prepared to hear 4-0. That was terrible. I would say we are unlucky but we also make our own pain. Delia seems to be trying everything but when your team insists on being dumb it is hard to coach. Stian being out all the time is forcing Williams to try to play above his measure. I don’t know 🤷🏻♂️. I have stopped watching games and just listening while exercising because it feels like a waste of time and beer.
I’m not even sure what to say anymore about them, they have gifted the first goal to their opponent in the first half so many times I lost count. The utterly shambolic way they try to play out of the back doesn’t work, they lose focus, make a disastrously bad pass then get punished, it’s almost as if the opposing team expects it now. You are right it is a waste of time and I’m on the hook for another half a season of tickets. Its one thing when it’s fun to watch and you lose games but this team is diabolical to watch. If they go a goal down its basically over. I love Guzan but maybe give Cohen a game to see how he does. I’m no Soccer/Football genius but try something else FFS. Its gotten embarrassing.
The sad thing is Atlanta United is one of the few teams in the area where transplants (which there are literally millions in the metro area) don’t already have an affiliation from their childhood MLB,NBA,NFL teams so there is an opportunity to really expand the sport and fanbase here but they are unwatchable at this point in time and I am a season ticket holder I care a great deal how well they play. The mistakes at the back virtually every match, giveaways in our own defensive third, cheap penalties at the top of the box and not able to simply clear a ball out of danger time and time again are just inexcusable for a professional team loaded with Internationals. The issue is you can only get mad for so long and then you get apathetic which is probably not what Mr. Blank wants.
Yes, an apathetic fanbase is far worse than an angry one. The angry one still cares.
Was out of the country so only saw score today… thought it was USMNT playing in NY 😰
I held out hope for Deila, but not subbing off Lennon at half (let alone at all??) is inexcusable. I’d rather swap him with Hibbert than see his embarrassing play anymore.
This summer window better shake things up and I’m hoping Henderson has plans in place. I mean, our entire back line is garbage aside from the “kids” and Amador.
Anyone else think that the Ukrainian ref had issue with that chip shot from our Russian – hence the no call PK? (Not trying to stir the pot, just making an observation when the announcers called out his nationality)
Humans being what they are…maybe?
I doubt it. Maybe if Miranchuk was the one fouled, but even then seems unlikely. More likely he didn’t want to swallow his pride and reverse his original decision.
At this point, Garth has to take ownership, right? He had his time to rebuild this thing, and the results are somehow worse than when he began. His fingerprints are over every part of this disaster. The worst part about this is that this team is so poor, it could take years to reset this again.
Yeah, this is what is most surprising to me. I am not seeing any pressure put on him from fans or media. The guy has been here what, 3 years? And the team has gotten worse; I’m not looking for 2018 ATLUTD, just improvement. I mean imagine you were hired somewhere and for 3 years you underperformed / got worse year over year. Would you expect to get fired?
Not that I have any idea how to improve this team beyond ‘get good players’ and ‘get a good coach’. I’m honestly at a loss other than hire a big name coach and let them cook.
IS GArth still affiliated with AUFC? Only time we hear from him is on the prematch broadcast.
It is shameless how when things are going “well” (playoff run last year) we hear from Garth. When things are going bad, we hear nothing. Say what you want about Darren and Carlos, one of them was on 92.9 each week. Garth or Henderson……nothing. Of course given his, “we’re back, BABY!” from last year, maybe it is for the best. His tenure here has been awful, just terrible. Go ahead, raise ticket prices again and tell us it is for the best!
Garth, like Boca before him, has a basic flaw in his thinking about how to build a team – they both believe in getting the players first, and then hiring the Manager – and invariably, the players don’t fit the Manager’s style of play, and neither the players nor the Manager want to change. The primary reason 2017 and 2018 worked so well is that Tata was primarily responsible for selecting the players / saying who he wanted. Garth has to own those mistakes! Also, I feel for Deila, but either he changes his “style” and adapts to the players, or this farce will continue for the remainder of the year.
This is nothing new…this team is fully of B team shit players.
Get ride of the coach, and all the shit players…give the younger players a chance. Get rid of Guzan please….. along with Lennon, Hernandez, Abram, Klich, #59. Get players who are young and tries harder that these losers. What a waste of time watching this garbage.
FYI..that should have been a penalty when the goalie took out thares.
Bro, Miranchuk (#59) is finally finding his rhythm the last 3-4 games. He had the chance for Thiare and hit the crossbar. Almiron would’ve just been floating in lala land and hit someone in the 40th row (with his form as of late)
One word: Relegation
Ninth place PPG in the Eastern Conference is 1.56. That’s a season total of 53. ATL UTD needs 36 pts in 16 matches to get to that total. That is 2.25 PPG.
When is it time to fire everyone, if not now?
Holy smokes! That’s a sobering statistic!
That’s only twelve wins out of 16…
To be clear… sarcasm
Does anyone in the front office give a shit about this 5 season and counting clusterfuck?? The malaise has seeped in everywhere and frankly not one player should feel safe on this squad.
Garth has proven incapable and needs to get the boot.
Deila has shown me nothing. Zero improvement in 3 goddamn months of play.
Burn it all to the ground
Seems a bit hysterical to suggest the front office doesn’t care. This is called the reality of what happens when a club has been committed to short term decisions. I would suggest there have been improvements…and I say that as someone who’s consistently said Deila was a bad choice as was Miggy (fan focused decision) as have been many others.
I’m guessing the convo initially went something like this…Hey, Ronnie….not interested…but listen…no thanks..you guys have a mess of a roster and your fans aren’t the best….well, look, just give it a chance…ok, I’ll give it a chance, but this is a long term job, here are my terms…ok, deal!
Now…can you imagine being the next coach who’d probably made it very clear…these things take time and this roster is a comedy of errors…and then oops…sorry, fans aren’t grumpy…gots to start over…
Now what do you think the next convo is going to sound like with the next coach? Especially considering despite what Atl fans think, nobody really cares much about Atl…maybe consider the question: how does atl utd attract decent talent.
Imo the team looked decent in the first half. What happened was a combo of a lone mental lapse that cascaded into a rapid spiral and checking out. You don’t fix that kind of fragility by firing another coach midway through a season unless a coach is exacerbating the psychological dysfunction.
I can guarantee you two things: firing Deila will not improve this season’s performance nor would it improve future performance. What will is pretending a little bit like we aren’t the Housewives of Atl drama org, show up to work for the remainder of the season without the melodrama. This is what Atlanta is at the moment. I don’t like it either but…
I have to disagree with your diagnosis of what went wrong on Thursday. Halftime break separated the downward spiral from Lennon’s brain fart, so I don’t think that’s to blame. This team has consistently shipped goals during the first 10-15 minutes of the second half all season. RD has got to shoulder a lot of blame for that regardless of the personnel on the field, so maybe that is fixable by someone else.
That trash bin needs to be on fire to really capture the current state of affairs.
I didn’t even need to read the article. The front cover is enough. Good night ya’ll.