Atlanta United saw some late-match magic strike again as it snatched a road point from the grasp of CF Montréal. Looking at the big picture, though, it does them no good in the standings, but Alexey Miranchuk continues to be Atlanta’s best player of late as he found the net once more. Here’s a quick look at what we saw north of the border tonight.
Alexey Miranchuk does it again
Miranchuk’s blistering form for Atlanta United continued, scoring his fifth goal in seven matches by somehow putting one past CFM keeper Thomas Gillier after a scrum in front of goal. In stoppage time, he nearly scored a would-be winner from distance that hit the crossbar. He has hit a new gear over the past number of weeks and keeps silencing the criticism that’s been sent his way during his time here.
Unfortunately, a draw does nothing for Atlanta United, but it’s good to see Miranchuk remain Atlanta’s man in form lately.
The difference in quality between Tristan Muyumba and Will Reilly is noticable
Ronny Deila put Muyumba in the starting XI in a midfield pairing with Bartek Slisz. And…well…it didn’t work. Muyumba was one of the more disappointing players on the pitch in the first half, making several errant passes and getting beaten to the box by Caden Clark during the sequence that led to Montréal’s goal.
Reilly came in at halftime and immediately the midfield looked better. He’s not perfect, but he’s certainly put in much better shifts than Muyumba at this point in time. Muyumba is under team control until 2027 (under contract through next season, with an option year) — he’s much too inconsistent at this point to have a significant contribution for this team.
Juan Berrocal and Steven Alzate make their debuts
Berrocal and Alzate received their visas in time for their respective debuts, and neither really had much of an impact outside of Berrocal’s near-miss header on a corner kick. The biggest priority for the two of them is getting them 90 minutes fit as they could be in line for a spot in the starting XI as soon as next Saturday against the Colorado Rapids.
Every week, Scarves and Spikes brings you original interviews, on-site coverage, live shows/podcasts, and the analysis you won’t find at the bigger national outlets. With 2026 being a World Cup year, Atlanta United facing yet another important transfer window, the U.S. Soccer National Training Center setting up shop in the Atlanta area, and NWSL Atlanta kicking off in 2028, your support helps us do even more.
What you get on Patreon:
- Atlanta United training ground updates
- Discord access — talk Atlanta soccer with the SnS team and other supporters
- Patreon-only mailbags
- Grey Gowder’s analytical deep-dives on roster construction, the academy, ATL UTD 2, and more
Start your free trial
ELL contributed more to defense than on offense, so maybe replace Lennon with ELL. What could it hurt at this point? Why did RD wait until the half to sub out Muyumba who appeared to complete more passes to Montreal than AU players?
On the plus side it was really nice to see Mihaj leading the team in the huddle after the half and playing strong – finally a leader! Hopefully Berocal and Alzate will contribute more as they acclimate and make their presence known. Like Brenan didn’t get much time but continues to play aggressively.
well traditionally you don’t make first half subs unless the player is injured since the team only gets 3 substitution windows and if you use 1 in the first half, it isn’t ideal in the 2nd half. And subbing a player to start the 2nd half does not waste the 3 substitution windows
That starting 11 was an odd choice because we’ve been trying it and it hasn’t been working. Not saying the 11 and subs for Atlas are the perfect game plan as they are a different team to compete against but that was a good starting point for how we’re going to compete.
The difference in this game was we looked a bit more dynamic than we have been. Less predictable with our plan of attack. We had some fumbles (Muyumba) and missed opportunities (Latte) but if you look you would have seen Lennon out of place putting the defense out of sorts (which he did well at last year) and you saw Reilly & Slisz controlling the ball better and our defense holding that back line well.
We still have other missed opportunities like Latte making runs on the weak side of the wingers (miggy running inside and latte behind him making runs). That kind of stuff needs to be sorted. He goes one way, they go another. They need to be in sync. Saba did the same thing at times…this can be the problem with the inverted winger setup if your striker is on the wrong side.
My takeaway, we put ourselves into positions to take advantage of the game we just couldn’t finish it. Better than many games before it, but still not good enough. Good teams take advantage of their opportunities. We still need to find that.
Starting Lennon, guzan and Muyumba were huge mistakes. Should have brought Alzate on sooner. Bringing on Williams is always a mistake. We were better when he didn’t even travel with the team. A yellow and a god awful cross at the end to give the ball to Montreal? No one was near him. Ronnie is a failure. Keep Ronnie, keep these results. Keep Ronnie, keep losing and letting down fans. Keep Ronnie, keep empty stadiums.
Well, not much we can do at fullback. That was a known area with little depth, and we have 2 injuries there at the moment.
RE Muyumba… I think Reilly passed him on the depth chart today. He had an okay enough bounce back after a poor showing vs Atlas. But most importantly, he showed up, which Muyumba did not.
I dont blame Deila there though given the Atlas game and not having Alzate in full swing.
I know expected goals is one of those “use it only when it fits your narrative” stats, but we “won” expected goals 3.1-0.7.
At some point, the players have to put the ball in the back of the net. I think basically all 10 outfield players could have been more clinical in the final third at some point.
That miss by Latte Lath when Montreal gave it away right in front of goal sums up the night and year. Our opposition scores those against us, and we slide them just outside of the post. The exact reason we are where we are.
Latte Lath has had too many easy misses over the course of the season. Even just good forwards bury those.
Like you said, xG is a compulsive narrative supporter, but xG trends are still important and tell a story, regardless of what it is:
I would be excited to be in bucket #3, except I have no confidence that we will move to bucket 4 because it seems training must be excluding anything related to finishing since we have been so awful at it forever.
I think our other issue is that we just don’t have a lot of guys that are both comfortable and capable of shooting. Sometimes they have one or the other, but rarely both. Sometimes very hot potato – “no, you shoot”; “no, you!” And then while we are ALL screaming SHOOOOOOOT, then finally [insert one of many players here] takes a wild shot that almost reaches the 200 section OR hits a weak low ball directly at the keeper that my grandmother could stop.
Alzate and Berrocal are probably not even 45 min fit yet. There visa didn’t even come through until yesterday, so they didn’t even practice with the team prior to this match. Also we don’t really have any other options at LB considering at this point Deila is refusing to play Chong Qui. Chong Qui wasn’t even on the bench last night, so I guess the team believes Chong Qui isn’t ready for a full 90 of MLS soccer. Unless Atlanta goes on a miracle 9 match winning streak, we are not playing in the playoffs. And considering Deila’s job is safe for one more season (at least to start), mind as well play our bench pieces to see what is usable and who has better chemistry.
That blows my mind. How can you fail this bad at your job and still be employed next year?? Ronnie is trash. There is nothing redeeming about him.
Hard to argue with you. Someone made the point early in the season that this team is basically the same one as last year plus Almiron and ELL. You would think we would have been at least marginally better and certainly not worse than last year. The fact that we’re almost unwatchable has to be RD’s responsibility IMO.
Only reasons I can think of are 1) we once again bought players before we had a coach and 2) we don’t want to be known as a team that does that and then fires the coach every season when he can’t make players he did not pick work.
Deila keeps trying the same old shit hoping it will finally work and then makes subs late which are nonsensical. I just can’t figure out what we are trying to do here and it’s way too late in the season for that.
We hired a manager the has the same game plan as De Boer… Why are surprised?
Play the players that they are thinking about selling or trading to get more value out of them.
If the team plans to stick Delia (aka De Boer 2.0), as fans we cannot expect a quick turnaround.
As a Founding Members, my wife and I are going to continue our season tickets but it gets harder to “cost justify” each year.
Sell back as many tickets as you can, then the renewal pain is not as bad