Well, things were looking decent until they weren’t, as Atlanta United traveled out west to play LAFC in the spectacle that is Sunday Night Soccer (After Dark). To be fair, the Five Stripes actually didn’t play a bad match, but the effort applied was never going to be enough against a team that’s fielding Son and Bouanga. The defense held its own for most of the match, but the attack – once again – looked incredibly uninspired. Here are the final whistle thoughts from the city of angels.
The defense, I guess
With a starting defense of Jayden Hibbert behind Juan Berrocal, Stian Gregersen, Enea Mihaj, and Ronald Hernandez, it was clear Pedro Amador’s game was going to have to change. Atlanta actually settled in fairly well to allowing LAFC to be at their most uncomfortable – that is to say, when they have the ball. The downside is that the attack never looked dangerous. Not even a smidge. In the moments that Atlanta played into the final third, the decision making looked about the same as it did in Chattanooga in the preseason.
The positive is that the defense has objectively improved since the money was spent there in the summer. But this Atlanta team is stuck between a rock and a hard place until they make the hard decisions involving any combination of the current attacking players. It’s frustrating this game didn’t end 0-0, because Hibbert and co actually put in a serious shift, but none of what I’m saying is new.
The offseason genuinely can’t come soon enough.
“To win, you have to score one more goal than your opponent”
The great Johan Cruyff uttered these words many moons ago, and I feel like whoever remains on this Atlanta roster after 2025 and who occupies any position titled “forward, winger, or attacking midfielder,” should be placed in a bus and forced to listen to it on repeat while making laps around 285. The two best chances of the game came from one of the central midfielders who, by the way, has been prone to at least one of these good chances every game. Bartek Slisz, however, isn’t responsible for scoring goals, or even being relied upon to try. The fact that he’s putting his laces through the ball as often as he does is both a credit to him and an indictment on the attackers.
Going back to the preseason, we were having this same discussion of Atlanta’s forwards simply doing too much in and around the box. It isn’t like this team doesn’t have the individual quality to hit the corner from 20 yards out, they just seem incredibly reluctant to do so. Meanwhile, Bartek Slisz, in his incredibly competitive nature, is out here trying to put the team on his back and make something happen. It’s infuriating to watch how many attacks go to die because it feels like Atlanta is trying to play through all 11 opposition players on the pitch to just walk the ball into the goal.
Take some shots. Please. Hit on a counter. Please. Do something. Please.
There isn’t a ton to analyze from this one, honestly. It’s genuinely more of the same, and it feels like nothing else is going to change until the 2025 season is finished.
Let us know below what you thought of the match.
Good news, guys – with a little help from DC and the Galaxy, WE CAN GET THAT SPOON!
Probably a dumb idea, but I’m going to put it out there anyway: maybe get Josef again, as a backup striker on a TAM deal instead of Thiare. They’re the same age, and Josef had a slightly better season this year (Transfermarkt has Josef – .80 G+A/90 vs Thiare .72 G+A/90).
Worse case you get the same result as keeping Thiare (which is to say realistically not much), but best case you unlock Almiron and Josef again from their partnership, which I think even Deila couldn’t completely destroy with subpar tactics.
I know those stats far from paint an accurate picture, but at this point I’m not entirely convinced we’d do any better if we had Cristiano Ronaldo, or the real Ronaldo, at striker. I like the feel good fantasy that reuniting Josef and Miggy would fix everything.
As much as I love Josef, I think we as a team need to stop looking towards the past and try to evolve as a whole. Tata is not coming through those doors and Almiron is not the Almiron of 2017. We as fans just need to keep letting FO know the current on-pitch product is not acceptable and that the teams needs to get better.
Agree with this. I feel like a Josef reunion might be more disappointing than nostalgic, ultimately. Like Almiron has been. For me, at least.
Yeah, like I said, dumb idea. I think a large part of me even considering it though is that they’ve been trying to evolve this team for the past 5 years, and we’re now competing for the wooden spoon. I was so excited by the signings of Muyumba, Slisz, Gregersen, Lath. Like where the heck is it going wrong? None of the signings, even coaches, have seemed like complete misses when they happened, just at worst not the best but maybe the best we could hope for. Heck, many of the players who left us (or even are still with us but go on international duty) perform great elsewhere. So why doesn’t it work here?
Something that’s stuck with me in my education is not just saying “do better.” better how? What concrete things can we actually measure doing better? If the signings overall seemed solid at the time, what sort of concrete thing can we point to personnel wise can we point to that says “here’s why it went wrong later”? How do we avoid hiring coaches who won’t give water or cause our players to flip tables or insist on crossing as the only method of attack? Despite all of them looking like winners on paper?
I’m not really looking for nostalgia (like I said, he’s only for a backup striker, not the main option), and I don’t think it’s likely to work. But at this point I’m not convinced it’ll be any worse than what we’ve already got.
It would be hard to be worse, for sure.
IMHO, worth what it costs you, is that our practice of signing many/most players without input from the coach (often because we don’t have one at the time), might be part of why it hasn’t been working here.
At this point the only reason I’m in favor of giving Delia at least until the break next season to right the ship is because he will have more opportunity, if allowed, to have input on players stay and which ones go, so he can attempt to build “his” team with “his” guys.
I think he signed on to a team that had a lot of players that were ill-suited to his philosophy. A good coach makes that work anyway, so maybe he isn’t that good a coach after all, or maybe some of the players were just the worst fit imaginable. Probably some combination of both.
Pretty much, other than Tata, I think all our coaches brought in maybe one or two players each time. Which can’t be good in building up a team. Deila has won in MLS before, so he is clearly capable of winning in the MLS. If you take away his record with us and Al Wahda, he has been above average.
But what’s his “philosophy”? This team has no identity. And not having an identity doesn’t count as an identity.
Yeah, FSF has convinced me I don’t want to give Deila more time. It’s been pointed out that Deila repeatedly shows that his main idea of attack is crossing, despite it being one of the least productive ways to score, and this is bearing out in how we lose productive moments in attack because we choose to spray it out wide instead of passing to the inside channel.
The MLS Cup is also significantly less impressive once talking with people from NYC that time, where apparently they had a mutiny somewhat similar to our 2019 (not as bad) where they reverted to the style of play the players knew and wanted, and even then to win the cup, they beat us lead by Barco; Supporter Shield Revs on a month of rest, and only on penalties; a Philly side hamstringed by multiple players out on covid protocol; and a middling Timber’s side also on penalties. (Referencing the Five Stripe Final podcast from May 6, about 30 minutes in)
I would agree with this. He needs influence over player selection before he gets canned. I would keep a short leash and snag a fired World Cup coach if it’s not working out mid season.
I don’t think it’s a dumb idea, I just don’t think it will go the way we all HOPE it would go.
Thanks for the article Tyler, I appreciate that you guys are doing the lords work here, continuing to post.
I didn’t know where else to comment on my thoughts today, so I chose this thread.
A lot of people here (or who used to be here and on DSS) probably know that I haven’t been the most supportive admirer of our coaching hire’s in the past. And while our latest hire hasn’t been very successful I went down a rabbit hole today to consider coaches that have been hired with more successful results since Pineda’s hire by Atlanta in 2021.
January 2022 – Steve Cherundalo LAFC
January 2022 – Bradley Carnell STL
June 2022 – Nick Cushing NYFC
December 2022 – Wilfred Nancy CLB
June 2023 – Tata Martinez MIA (wasn’t going to happened here, but…)
December 2023 – Dean Smith CLT
February 2024 – Eric Ramsey MIN
July 2024 – BJ Callaghan NASH
September 2024 – Mikey Varas SD
October 2024 – Greg Berhalter CHI
November 2024 – Javier Mascherano MIA (of course it would never going to happened here, but…)
October 2024 – Nico Estevez ATX
(Deila hired in December 2024)
January 2025 – Bradley Carnell PHIL (again)
January 2025 – Pascal Jansen NYFC
I don’t know what else to conclude from this other than we have had a bad strategy on assigning a coach for this club, when other obvious options have been available and rendered more successful with maybe lesser resources.
Or that those responsible for hiring the coach might not be good at identifying talent on or off the field and bad (or slow) at making the decision at the right time to set this team up for success.
We’re just grateful for all of yall who grace these boards week in and week out, it means a lot, especially in such a rough year.
That list is fascinating…if not a bit sickening 😂 But it’s true, the results have simply been absent for almost half a decade
Nothing more to add. It was actually a smart shift in formation and tactical approach. That’s the best way to get a result against LAFC. Still, the complete absence of any kind of danger from our attack is glaring. We even strung together some decent build ups, but then we get to the attacking third and it’s shit sandwich city. We recorded 3 shots all night, and two of them were “screw it, something’s gotta give” shots by Slisz from outside the box. I don’t have an issue with him taking those at all, but that can’t be basically all of our attacking output. Our CM uncorking speculative shots from distance isn’t going to lead to a ton.
I thought Amador had a rough game with his support in the attack. His numbers ended up okay-ish, but he had some of the worst giveaways on pass attempts of anyone on the team. He did record a number of defensive actions, which I guess is good. Slisz on paper, at least, was our best outfield player of the night. He seemed to be more effective progressing the ball than anyone else on the team. I think this highlights Miranchuk’s limitations in a counter attacking system. He just doesn’t have the pace to beat anyone in space.
Shocking stat of the night, Muyumba was 18/18 on passing attempts (though he did his best to try and leave a few of them short).
I expected a blowout and that didn’t happen, so…progress? No, not progress, just a good note that we defensively can play and hold good teams.
But now with our offense…man, that was just sad.
lather
rinse
repeat…
since 2020
We can’t expect change until we fire the biggest problem of all, the coach. He has failed in every single aspect. He’s been fired from every job since NYFC. There is a reason for that.
Could not agree more with this statement, just pitiful all season long IMO.
So glad I was asleep and wasted zero minutes on this match.
I missed the match, and having just watched the “highlights” I could not agree with you more!