Training Ground Notebook: The Mirror Doesn't Lie

Atlanta United's players gave an honest accounting of the Columbus loss. The answers weren't complicated. That might be the most concerning part.

Some press conferences after a tough loss give you more questions than answers. Tuesday's session with Elias Báez and Steven Alzate was the opposite. Both players came in prepared to be specific, and they were.

Atlanta United ahead of Tuesday's training session. (photo: Jason Longshore)

The goals Atlanta conceded against Columbus were not the product of being outclassed. They were the product of small individual errors stacking on top of each other at the worst possible moments. Alzate said it plainly: every player needs to look in the mirror and ask whether he did his job. Báez echoed the same idea through the specifics of what actually happened on the field.

That honesty is worth something. But it also raises a harder question. If the team already knows what went wrong, why does it keep happening?

The Details That Cost Everything

Neither player tried to hide behind the scoreline or the opponent's quality.

Báez walked through the first goal with perfect clarity. Columbus had been pushing Atlanta into a deep defensive shape all night, dragging Miguel Almirón and Alexei Miranchuk back to help defend. When the cross came in, Báez went back to help Almirón, who is an attacker by trade and not a natural marker in those situations. The forward won the header. Credit to Columbus, Báez said, but he was also clear that the chain of events leading to that moment was Atlanta's own doing.

Alzate's breakdown was simpler but no less pointed.

"Every goal they scored, there's someone that could do better to stop the goal."

Tomas Jacob and Saba Lobjanidze battling in Tuesday's training session. (photo: Jason Longshore)

The second goal had no one applying pressure to the fullback before the shot. The third goal had no one managing the moment after Atlanta scored. Each one was a different kind of individual lapse. Each one was preventable.

The consistent phrase from both players was "small mistakes." Not tactical disasters. Not a system that isn't working. Small, correctable failures of execution and attention that combined to make a winnable game unwinnable. Alzate put it directly: the goals they conceded were not big errors, but small individual ones, and the team has to correct them quickly if it wants to change where it sits in the table.

That framing is honest. It is also sobering, because small mistakes are often the hardest kind to fix. They don't announce themselves in film sessions the way a structural breakdown does. They live in the space between what a player knows he should do and what he actually does under pressure in the moment.

The Goal That Really Hurt

Of the three Columbus goals, both players came back most pointedly to the third, the one that came almost immediately after Atlanta had scored to make it two-one.

Alzate called it the one that really killed them. At 2-1, he said, you are still in the game. You have momentum. You are at home. And then, within seconds of the restart, the ball is in your net and the game is gone.

"I think when we scored, we kind of... I didn't feel like it, but it must have been some sort of complacency."

Báez called it euphoria. They are describing the same thing from slightly different angles: a team that had not yet learned how to protect a moment of joy. Scoring should reset the defensive mindset, not dissolve it. Against Columbus, it dissolved it.

This is not a new problem in soccer. It is one of the oldest. But it is also one that experienced teams learn to manage, and Atlanta has not managed it yet. The third goal conceded was not a tactical failure. It was an emotional one. The team felt something positive and let it pull them out of position at the exact moment when discipline mattered most.

Correcting that is harder than fixing a defensive shape. You can draw lines on a whiteboard for a shape. Emotional discipline under pressure comes from repetition, trust, and the kind of chemistry that only accumulates over time.

The Width Problem No One Is Solving

Alzate offered the most tactically substantive comments, and the thread that deserves the most attention going forward is what he said about Atlanta's congestion in the final third.

Transitions were part of the early portion of Tuesday's training session. (photo: Jason Longshore)

The team finished the Columbus match with only three touches inside the eighteen-yard box through Miranchuk's goal in the 60th minute. They were getting into the attacking third. They just weren't getting into the box.

His explanation was direct: Atlanta has two wide players who both prefer to come inside in Almirón and Miranchuk. When they both do that at the same time, there is no one left to stretch the play. When the fullbacks have been able to do that, specifically in the Philadelphia match, the team has looked its best.

As an eight, Alzate said, you spend a lot of time trying to figure out when to stay central, when to pull out, and when to drop deeper, all based on what the wide players are doing. The problem is that when both of them are coming in simultaneously, the midfielders get caught in their space, the fullbacks are the only ones offering width, and the entire attack ends up running through a narrow channel that a well-organized defense can handle without much strain.

The answer isn't necessarily asking those players to play differently than they are built to play. But it does require someone, whether an eight, a fullback, or the player on the weak side, to read that moment and make a run that pulls the defense. Alzate said it plainly: if one of them is coming inside, the other needs to be available to make the run in behind.

Báez added a complementary piece from his own role as one of those fullbacks. He noted that when Will Reilly played alongside him in midfield, Reilly's willingness to drop behind him gave Báez the freedom to get forward into attack. And when Reilly played between the lines, Báez and his other midfield partners tried to find him in those spaces. That kind of two-way relationship, one player's movement enabling another's, is exactly what has been missing in the wider attacking picture. The same principle that worked in the midfield needs to work higher up the pitch.

Columbus Gave Atlanta a Clear Tactical Problem

The Columbus match was not a mystery. Both players described it with enough detail that the picture is fairly complete.

Diego Rossi and Andrés Herrera created two-v-one situations against Báez on the left side throughout the game. Báez described it precisely:

"I was marking Rossi, and so I was focused on him. And when he would go inside, that would leave space for Herrera on the outside. And sometimes the opposite, when Herrera was very advanced, that would sometimes leave Rossi free."

Atlanta never found a clean answer to that rotation, and Báez was honest that the adjustment simply didn't come. When Steven Moreira joined that duo from his right back position, it made Columbus' attack even more dangerous.

That is partly a credit to Columbus. The movement was deliberate and well-executed. But it is also a description of a team that could not adapt within a match to something the opponent was doing consistently. The problem was visible early. It persisted late. The inability to solve it in real time is the kind of thing that separates teams that are developing from teams that have arrived.

Alzate's observation about Columbus building momentum only after they scored early in the second half is important context here. Before that goal, he felt the game was even. Atlanta had a strong case for a first-half penalty. If that goes in, the whole shape of the match shifts. The Crew's control was not inevitable. It was built on a moment of Atlanta's own lost concentration, and then it was sealed by the third goal coming out of the same emotional lapse both players described.

The scoreline made it look more comfortable for Columbus than it actually was for most of the match.

Chemistry Is the Word, And It Has a Cost

Alzate said something in his press conference that stood out precisely because players almost never say it this directly: the starting eleven still isn't concrete.

He wasn't complaining. He framed it as an observation. But the implication is real.

"Changing the team every week is not gonna help build chemistry, because at the end of the day, it's about understanding your teammates."

You can train together every day, he said, and it still isn't the same as match minutes. The game moves at a different pace, in different pressure, and it demands a different kind of trust. His word for what Atlanta is missing was chemistry. Not talent. Not effort. Chemistry, the accumulated knowledge of how your teammates move, what they prefer, where they want the ball, when they are going to make a run. That knowledge takes time and consistency to build, and it doesn't accumulate if the personnel around you keeps shifting.

Báez touched the same idea from a different angle when he described adapting to Reilly, who was making his first appearance of the season. He hadn't played with him in a competitive match before Saturday. He had to figure out in real time how Reilly's tendencies changed what was available to him. He managed it, but that kind of in-game calibration takes energy and attention that a more familiar pairing wouldn't require.

The roster instability isn't just a depth question or a selection question. It has a cost on the field, and that cost shows up in the small moments, the late run that doesn't get made, the pass that goes to feet when it should go in behind, the player who hesitates because he isn't quite sure yet what his teammate is about to do.

The Belief Underneath All of It

None of this commentary from Báez and Alzate sounded like despair. Both players pushed back, in their own ways, on the idea that this team is carrying a weight it can't put down.

Alzate was direct about the hangover from last year question. He doesn't feel it. A new coach came in, the preseason was solid, and the start has been disappointing but not disastrous. He pointed out that Atlanta is only a couple of wins from the playoff picture. He also offered the most useful reframe of the moment: Tata Martino doesn't want wins built on poor play, because that catches up to you. What he wants is consistency, the right habits, and the belief that results will follow from doing things correctly.

Báez went further. He came to Atlanta knowing the results from last season, and he said it changed nothing about why he came.

"I came here and I still believe that this team can fight at the top of the standings. We know right now we're not getting the results that we want, but I think when we can start to accumulate points and move up, I feel like I have the confidence that this team can still fight, and fight for a championship. Why not?"

That belief matters, but it doesn't resolve anything on its own. The mirror both players pointed to Tuesday shows a team that understands its problems clearly. The question now is whether that understanding can be converted into different behavior on Saturday, and the Saturday after that, until the small mistakes happen less often and the chemistry they keep describing finally starts to look like something you can see in the standings.

The awareness is there. That's further along than some teams get. But awareness and execution are different things, and right now there is still a gap between them.