Atlanta United falls 3-2 to Chicago, playoff hopes all but gone
Atlanta United's dwindling playoff hopes suffered another setback Saturday night at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. After taking a fourth-minute lead through Tomás Jacob, the Five Stripes conceded three unanswered goals and ultimately fell 3-2 to the Chicago Fire, leaving them nine points below the Eastern Conference playoff line with three matches remaining.
Results earlier in the day were less than kind. Columbus won its match 4-2, and the Red Bulls shut out Inter Miami 2-0. That meant the Five Stripes could not be eliminated Saturday, but they would be hanging on the ledge.
For the home side, it was a standard starting XI for Tata Martino in a 4-2-3-1, with Lucas Hoyos in net. The back four, from left to right, was Elías Báez, Júnior Alonso, Paulo Díaz, and Tomás Jacob. Mauricio Amaro and Giuliano Galoppo were the two midfielders in front of them. The attacking midfielders were Miguel Almirón, Jay Fortune, and Alexey Miranchuk, with Breel Embolo up top.
Chicago came in fourth in the East with Charlotte and Philadelphia right behind, so the match was a chance to protect that spot. Chris Brady started in net. The back line for head coach Gregg Berhalter was Jonathan Dean, Mbekezeli Mbokazi, Andreas Hanche-Olsen, and Noah Allen. The midfield three was Maren Haile-Selassie, Djé D'Avilla, and Anton Salétros, and the front line was Jonathan Bamba, Robert Lewandowski, and Philip Zinckernagel.
Atlanta United started on the front foot and struck in the fourth minute. After United intercepted a Chicago pass, Amaro sent a long ball up the left channel to Almirón in the attacking third. Almirón cut inside and found Jacob on a marauding run down the right at full speed. Jacob, who covered some seventy yards on the play, beat Brady with a right-footed finish into the bottom left corner, the keeper getting only a slight touch, and United had a 1-0 lead.
It was Amaro's first assist in an Atlanta United uniform, Almirón's 42nd, and the fastest goal the Five Stripes have scored this season.
United had a few more looks after that, including more work from a very busy Jacob down the right. Miranchuk and Alonso combined to find Embolo for a bicycle attempt that, while audacious, came back for offside.
Over the next twenty minutes, Chicago took control of possession and the match, keeping the ball in its attacking half and pushing Atlanta to defend deeper and deeper. Zinckernagel rattled the crossbar from the left side of the box in the 25th minute. The run ended in the 28th minute when Galoppo and Embolo worked into the Chicago third, but their final connection just missed and the Fire took the ball back.
Chicago found the equalizer in the 30th minute. As the Fire attacked with a cross from the left, Zinckernagel pushed Báez in the back inside the United six-yard box, sending him into Hoyos. No foul was called, and Chicago was awarded a corner. Zinckernagel's delivery found Lewandowski, whose header was blocked, and the rebound fell to Salétros at the top of the arc. His left-footed shot went through traffic and past Hoyos into the bottom right corner.
Atlanta chased a second goal. With ten minutes left in the half, Amaro drove inside the 18 and cut the ball back to Embolo, but Brady stopped the point-blank shot and needed treatment before play resumed. Díaz headed wide off an Almirón set piece in the 40th minute, and Almirón put a header of his own wide off a Báez cross in the 44th.
Embolo thought he had restored the lead in the third minute of stoppage time when his shot got past Brady, but Jacob was judged offside on the play. The last chance of the half went to the Fire, as Lewandowski chipped Hoyos in the fourth minute of stoppage time only to watch the ball trickle wide of the far post.
Berhalter sent on Anzor Mekvabishvili for D'Avilla at halftime, and the move paid off six minutes into the second half. In the 51st minute, Mekvabishvili intercepted a pass up the middle from Hoyos intended for Amaro, crashed toward the top of the 18, and beat Hoyos with a quick shot for a 2-1 Chicago lead.
Nine minutes later, Hoyos picked up a back pass from Díaz at the edge of the Atlanta six-yard box, and the referee awarded the Fire an indirect free kick. Hoyos was also shown a yellow card. Off a feed from Salétros, Zinckernagel roofed his shot past Hoyos at the near post for goal number three in the 60th minute.
Martino went to his bench right away, bringing on Fafà Picault for Miranchuk and Tristan Muyumba for Fortune in the 62nd minute.
Atlanta answered in the 68th minute. Báez sent in a cross, and Embolo headed it past Brady into the bottom left corner to cut the margin to 3-2. Amaro picked up another secondary assist for his second of the match. United had the run of play for the remainder of the match. Berhalter responded with a triple substitution two minutes later, taking off Lewandowski, Zinckernagel, and Allen for Johan Gómez, Andrew Gutman, and Puso Dithejane.
Embolo had another look in the 71st minute but sent his shot from the left side of the box wide, and Galoppo put an effort high and wide off an Almirón corner in the 77th. Chicago nearly ended it in the 81st minute when Bamba's shot from outside the box went just wide. Five yellow cards came in a ten-minute stretch, with Díaz, Mekvabishvili, Mbokazi, Gómez, and Alonso all booked between the 74th and 84th minutes.
Martino added Matt Edwards for Díaz in the 80th minute and Luke Brennan for Galoppo in the 87th.
Jonathan Dean's diving header was the Fire's defensive highlight with only seconds left in regulation. Brennan sent a cross to the far post looking for Picault, but Dean anticipated the passing lane and headed the ball away, conceding a corner to stop the rush. Atlanta could not find an equalizer in five minutes of stoppage time.
Martino did not see the goals conceded as a familiar defensive breakdown.
"I'm not sure that, once again, they were defensive errors," he said. "The second goal is a defensive error, but it's an error from playing the ball out of the back badly, not a marking error. It's a bad decision when it comes to building out of the back."
He described the first and third goals as a set-piece rebound and a set piece, and he took the blame for the build-out mistake himself. "The first thing I have to do is own my mistake, because that's what we ask of him," Martino said. "So it's not the goalkeeper's error, it's the coach's error, if there was an error at all. But either way, we're going to keep trying it."
On the indirect free kick that led to the third goal, Martino said, "The call is right, I'm not complaining about the call. I'd dare say that if it had been the other way around, he wouldn't have called it."
Martino spent much of his press conference on officiating. He pointed to the foul on Báez before the corner that produced Chicago's equalizer, and he compared the disallowed Embolo goal to a Cincinnati goal against Atlanta where the assistant referee kept his flag down.
"Now, it's strange for it to happen to you systematically for almost the entire year," he said. "I'd like to see a soccer show tonight, like there are in other parts of the world, where you put the Cincinnati play and today's play side by side and tell me why the linesman didn't raise his flag against Cincinnati and why he did today."
He was clear he could not explain it. "Honestly, I don't know why it happens," Martino said. "If I gave some reason, I'd be lying, because the truth is I don't know." He later added, "Sorry, I went too far with the excuses, and I don't normally do that. But it's not normal for this to be so repetitive, and I have to say it."
Asked for a self-assessment, Martino listed not defending the second ball on the first goal, the build-out error on the second, and a lack of finishing.
"In the moments in soccer when you're superior, you have to back it up in the opponent's goal," he said. He added that Atlanta gave up too much of the initiative after the first 15 or 20 minutes. "We have to get used to playing much more time in the opponent's half, and also handling the ball much better."
He still saw a step forward. "The positive today, besides Breel's performance, which was the best, and that has to do with the understanding he's building with his teammates and the fact that he's getting better and better physically, I think it was a good game from the team," Martino said. "Obviously, whoever is listening to me says, 'but your team is last or second-to-last,' and they're right. But I can't stop seeing the good things my team does because of that."
Asked how Atlanta can create better service for Embolo without many true wingers, Martino called it an issue to resolve after the season. He noted Brennan is a pure winger, while "Fafà, at this stage of his career, is no longer a pure winger," and said not much will change "in a week where we play three games."
Embolo, who scored the lone United goal of the second half, was blunt. "I'm really, really angry because it's a mix of feeling, because I think we don't deserve to be where we are," he told Jason Longshore in the locker room. "But at the same time, when you're not winning the game, you cannot expect more."
"The team is working hard. There are no cheaters in this team," Embolo said. "I didn't see a team who's better than us." He also looked ahead: "I'm pretty sure that next year, we will be in front when we have a lot more confidence."
Fortune pointed to the small margins. "I just think we, as a collective, probably, we're just missing that little extra bite that kinda just gets us over the edge," he told Longshore.
"It's difficult when you play a team that goes man for man. When you're defending as much as we were, if you don't take the moment to settle down on the ball and keep the ball a little bit and you're constantly defending, you know, they'll grow confidence into the game."
Assistant coach Rodrigo Rios echoed Martino on the equalizer. "We believe there was a foul before the corner that they scored," he told Madison Crews for Star 94 radio. Rios said the message to the substitutes was "to be brave, to be aggressive, to look forward." He added, "Before the subs, it was hard for us to play because they press really well, and it was an intense game. But they gave us fresh legs and good intentions to go inside the box."
With the 3-2 loss, Atlanta United (8-17-6, 30 points) remains nine points out of the play-in round in the East with three matches left in the regular season. United travels to New York City FC in midweek.
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