Dax McCarty: "I feel like right now, we all need a dose of humility."

After the match last night, Joe and I caught Dax McCarty in the locker room to get his thoughts on the current state of the team. He didn’t mince words. We posted the full audio here, but we think it’s worth it to have the full transcript available.

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Five Stripe Final: What's the mood of the team right now? Obviously, it's a rough stretch.

Dax McCarty: Well yeah, we're pissed off. As we should be. It's not good enough. It's unacceptable for a club like Atlanta United to lose three consecutive home games and what is it now five or six winless? I mean it's unacceptable and, yeah, we're not happy about it.

FSF: How do you work your way through these things?

McCarty: Well, you need to have some accountability. And you need to have guys that have a little bit of a backbone that can look at each other in the face and look at themselves in the mirror and say, “I need to be better in all facets of the game.”

Because right now, we're conceding goals too easily after a good start to the season defensively. And we're not scoring enough goals and we're disjointed in our attack and we have a lot of work to do to get back to the cohesion and the quality that I know that we have in this locker room.

So the one thing that you won't see and that we aren't going to do is start bitching and moaning and pointing fingers at each other because that accomplishes nothing. And that will just put a lot more doubt in our minds that we can get out of this. So it's all about looking inward. Look at yourself. What can you do to help the team? Where are our shortcomings? And fix it. That's the only way we can get out of this is to look at each other and say that it's not been good enough and that we're gonna get out of it.

FSF: That doubt can spiral at times and kind of drag you under. How do you keep things from continuing to turn negative?

McCarty: Well, you need guys to stand up and be counted and you need guys to communicate through it.

And I think there's... for me right now, we have, I think there's a little too much. How can I put this.……….

For me, I feel like right now, we all need a little bit of a dose of humility. And that's everyone. Collective. As a team. We can't step on the field and expect that because we're at Mercedes-Benz Stadium or because we're Atlanta United that teams are just going to roll over and give us a win and a result.

It's actually the opposite. We have to expect that we're going to get the best shot out of every team in this league. Because they all want to kick our ass. And if we're not ready for that, then it's going to turn into what's been happening the last couple of weeks, which is just mistakes that lead to goals that then lead to frustration that now we can't get out of.

And so, I think, like I said, we could all use a little bit of humility. The fact that maybe we're not as good as we think we are. And the only way to do that is go and work on the things that we need to work on and make them better and improve. Which is a lot right now. We're struggling in a lot of areas. And it's not just one or two things. It's a bunch of things, and we have to fix all those.

FSF: How much does the coaching staff affect that? Because right now, fans are pretty vocal about wanting a change.

McCarty: It's everybody. There's not one person that is involved in this club or in this locker room that should be sitting there thinking I don't have responsibility in this.

The coaching staff absolutely feels like they want to help us get out of this. But it's on the players. We’re the ones that step on the field every day and have to get the job done. So for me, it takes accountability from everyone.

And sure, I think it's easy to blame certain individuals if that's what people want to do, but that's not what we're gonna do. We're gonna continue to support each other and we're gonna continue to try to climb out of this.

Because that's the only way forward and the minute you start trying to nitpick and say, "Well, it's your fault" and start to question what's happening, that's the minute you continue down this hole of bad results, which is exactly what we're in right now. It's a hole.

So, I've been through these in my career. I've been through these on great teams that have come out of this stronger and better on the other side and I have absolutely zero doubt in my mind that this team will come out of this stronger and better on the other side. It's just a matter of when and we need to start having some urgency. Because it hasn't been good enough now for a month. And the urgency for me is the most important thing with this group.

FSF: To ask about the tactics a little bit when he came in were you central in a three, what exactly was the setup?

McCarty: Yeah, Gonzalo, yeah, he wanted me to stay central and he wanted to push Bartek and Tristan a little bit higher so we could get some support to GG and try to get more in behind their midfield.

So, great start to the second half. Obviously. Getting the goal is fantastic. But it's been a theme for us the last month where we're playing—I don't want to say great—but we're playing okay, we're playing well. We get a goal. We get two goals. And then somehow we concede almost instantly after we score.

It happened tonight. Twice actually. And these are things that winning teams don't do. You don't concede goals right after you score and right after you're on the front foot with teams that are going to come in and make things hard for you.

And right now at Mercedes Benz stadium teams come in, they play with five in the back. They make things really difficult through the middle of the field.

We try to find little advantages. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. We score. We should be scoring the second, we should be scoring the third. We shouldn't be conceding within five minutes of scoring a goal. And that leads to everyone losing confidence. That leads to everybody getting frustrated because we know it's not good enough and you know that's unacceptable.

So, you know, these are these are things that we need to talk about and we need to be open about because we're all better than that in this locker room. And the expectation of the fans is more than that, quite frankly.

And so, you know, you look at a table and it's unacceptable where we are. Everyone can acknowledge that. We need to talk about it. We can't be afraid of it. We're not playing well right now. And it's the reality of this league that you can go through slumps and right now, we have to find a way out of it.

And I think all we need is one good result one win maybe on the road. Let's go on the road. Let's get out of this together. Because that's the only way forward. It's not individually. No one individual person is going to get us out of the kind of poor run of form we're in. It's a team effort. And that's the exact thing and the way we have to think about it.