ATLANTA – Atlanta United’s hectic month finally appears to be catching up to them.
The Five Stripes came into Tuesday’s home match against fellow expansion club Minnesota United FC needing a win to move into second place in the East ahead of NYCFC via tiebreaker. A victory would’ve put them in pole position to avoid the Knockout Round in the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs, something that’d be very valuable for Tata Martino’s banged-up roster.
But after battling back from a 2-1 deficit to take the lead with 10 men, Atlanta ended the night in capitulation and frustration – conceding twice in the game’s final minutes to lose 3-2. The defeat was a big blow to Atlanta’s chances of finishing in the top two of the East, but captain Michael Parkhurst still believes they have a shot at a first-round bye. They’ve just got to win both of their final two games.
“I still think that if we take six points we have a very good chance of getting the second seed,” said Parkhurst. “It’s there for us and even if it’s not, finishing in the top four is very important. We want a home game if we have to play the play-in game. It’s very advantageous that we have a home game. At the minimum, we want to finish top four.”
Atlanta’s Rookie of the Year candidate Julian Gressel echoed those sentiments, but hinted that the Five Stripes team that resumes play after the international break will be better rested than the one that played its eighth match in the previous 23 days on Tuesday.
“I think we all need some time off and we need to just recover from that tough stretch that we had,” Gressel said after the defeat. “It would have been nice to go into that break with a win. I think then we would have recovered a little bit faster but we have enough time now to recover and then obviously get our minds and our bodies ready for the last two games and then the playoffs.”
While the players were despondent and drained after match, Martino was a little feistier. He made it clear that he disagreed not so much with the calls made by the officials, but more so with some decisions that weren’t given by referee Armando Villareal and his VAR Silviu Petrescu. He was particularly upset about Collin Martin’s 30th-minute yellow card not being a straight red.
“Absolutely. Without the need to review it or anything,” Martino said through a translator. “I don’t think there was a single person in the stadium that didn’t think it was red, even though we’re all for Atlanta. For me it was a foul that should he have been disqualified for.”
Martino has faced criticism from media and some fans for his stance on player rotation through such a busy stretch for the club. Chris McCann was forced to leave the game late in the first half with a leg injury, making him the fourth player to injure himself in the last month. He joins star midfielder Miguel Almiron, Greg Garza and Brandon Vazquez on Atlanta’s injured list.
“I understand that it’s a risk when we play so many games,” said Martino. “I said it to the players, I don’t remember having had so many games myself or even watching other teams go through a stretch of games like we did with these eight games in 23 days. We knew it was a risk we had to take because when we started this streak of games against Dallas we were almost outside the playoffs, so there wasn’t a lot of time to rotate players.”
