Training Ground Notebook: Tactical clarity, second-half answers, and the price of entertainment
- Jason Longshore
- 3 days ago
- 6 min read
Gerardo Martino broke down how Atlanta United's attack functioned against New England, addressed the ongoing second-half struggles, and spoke with real emotion about why playing attractive soccer matters to him. Saba Lobjanidze was direct about what the team still needs to find.
Atlanta United is headed to Toronto on Saturday carrying one of the more complicated feelings in soccer: a performance that looked like progress and a result that felt like more of the same. Tata Martino spent Friday at training ground laying out what he saw, what he liked, and where this group still has work to do. Saba Lobjanidze sat down and was honest about the team's unfinished business.
Both of them sounded like people who believe something is being built here. Neither of them pretended the building is finished.
Reading the space behind New England's back four
The most revealing thread of Friday's availability was how Martino described the tactical approach against New England. It was not a generic game plan. It was a specific read of a specific opponent, and he was happy to walk through exactly how it worked.
"We prepared for the match understanding that the space was behind New England's back four," Martino said. "Sometimes the space is behind the midfield line, but in this match we understood it was behind the back four."
New England's center backs are aggressive markers who like to step up and track a dropping striker. Martino built his alignment around that tendency: deploy a nine who could pull them out of position, then send wide players into the space they vacated.
The alignment also gave Alexey Miranchuk room to operate in the pockets between lines, and Martino made clear how much he values what Miranchuk brings in those moments.
"What I liked most was the ability and intelligence Alexey has to understand where the space is and how to find the ball," Martino said. "Alexey is, from my point of view, a player who goes against the rules that exist in football today about looking exclusively at numbers."
And he went further on that point.
"You have to be careful in how you interpret the numbers," Martino said, "but you also have to preserve the footballing vision that the coach has."
Sometimes those lenses point in the same direction. With Miranchuk, you need the second one to fully see the first player. Lobjanidze connected to that idea from the player side when asked about his relationship with Miranchuk in the attacking third.
"I wanna use him 100 percent," Lobjanidze said. "I'm sure, like, when I'm giving him a pass or something, I know he will do something."
There is something in that small quote that speaks to a larger dynamic in Atlanta's best attacking moments: trust between specific players, built on repetition, allowing things to happen faster than any defensive shape can react.
On the question of Latte Lath, Martino was careful. He acknowledged the pressure that comes with being the striker when goals feel like they depend on one player alone, and said sometimes protecting someone means giving them fewer minutes rather than more.
"Whatever I think, we have the obligation to improve with the players we have, because they are the players we started the season with," he said. "I never ask myself whether we can or cannot do it with them. What I ask myself, what I try to do, is resolve it with them."
It is the posture of a coach who has made his peace with the situation and is focused entirely on the work inside it.
The second-half problem, and what connection actually means
Atlanta has allowed 11 goals in the second half of matches this season compared to five in the first half. That gap is hard to ignore, and both Martino and Lobjanidze were asked about it directly.
Martino pushed back slightly on the framing. He does not think of it as a first-half versus second-half problem specifically. He sees it as a consistency and error problem that tends to surface at the wrong moments.
"More than a first-half or second-half issue, I think it is a question of being more consistent and not making errors," he said. "And when I talk about errors, I am not only talking about errors that lead to goals we concede, but also the opportunities we have to secure the result."
Early in the second half against New England, Atlanta had two clear chances to make it 2-0. Missing those changes the entire dynamic of what follows. He also noted, with some satisfaction, that the team was not retreating to protect the lead. Atlanta was still hunting the second goal. That is the right mentality. The execution just has to catch up to it.
Lobjanidze gave the ground-level version of the same diagnosis.
"We're gonna be more concentrated in the last twenty minutes, last thirty minutes, but we are actually," he said. "We are missing something."
He was pressed on what that something is, and his answer was worth sitting with.
"I would say it's, I don't know, connection. The players, each player."
He expanded on that when asked what finding that connection actually looks like in practice.
"If someone makes a mistake, there's gonna be someone to help the other player," he said. "If we are attacking together, we're gonna defend together also."
It sounds simple. In a team still learning to trust each other, still building the muscle memory of automatic help and coverage, it is the most important thing.
The young players who are taking charge
Martino was asked about several of his players and took the opportunity to say something about the character of this group under pressure. He singled out Will Reilly, Cooper Sanchez, and Jay Fortune by name.
"It keeps impressing me how, in this difficult situation the team is in, young players like Will, Cooper, and Jay are stepping up and taking charge," Martino said. "For me, that is very good news."
He reached for the word he wanted and found it: valentÃa. He worked through the translation in real time with his interpreter, landing on brave, then second-guessing it. "It sounds more like a soldier than a footballer," he said, with a laugh. But the meaning held. In a club under pressure, with experienced players not yet delivering the expected results, it is the younger ones showing the courage to carry the weight.
The communion between a team and its city
I asked the final question of the Friday session to Martino about how important it is to him that Atlanta plays an entertaining, attractive style for the supporters. He did not give a diplomatic answer. He gave a real one.
"Fundamental, for me, fundamental," he said. "It is the way, and especially given how sport is understood in the United States."
He knows how American sports culture works. He knows the demand for entertainment is built into the relationship between a team and its fanbase in a way that differs from other football cultures. He acknowledged that defense matters too, noting that basketball crowds chant for it. But he came back to the central point.
"When a team is attractive and wins over its own supporters through their eyes, a communion forms that is hard to break," he said. "And that is why this situation we are living through, having lived through something different before, has me feeling bad, worried, angry."
That last word landed hard. Not disappointed. Not concerned. Angry. He knows what that communion looks like from the other side, and the distance between that and where Atlanta sits right now is what drives the emotion.
Lobjanidze echoed that from a different angle when asked about training in front of a crowd of supporters on a difficult week.
"I feel so bad because we have the best fans in Atlanta, and what we are doing, they don't deserve," he said. "We cannot say, excuse me, like, we play good for sixty minutes. I mean, like, they don't deserve that."
No hedging, no pointing to the positives as consolation. Just accountability.
Atlanta United faces Toronto FC on Saturday at BMO Field, kickoff is set for just after 1pm. Coverage begins at noon on 92.9 The Game and the Audacy app.