Rewatch: Atlanta United played pretty well against FC Dallas and it didn't matter

Probably gotta stop doing bad things to win more games

If you came here expecting a choice selection of clips showcasing a clear trend that will define the rest of the season for Atlanta United, I don’t got ‘em. I’ve got a screenshot though.

Ball went there. And Dallas immediately capitalized by grabbing their lone goal of the night off a miskick.

This could have been a really intriguing rewatch. After all, we got our first look at Miguel Almirón as Atlanta United’s starting No. 10, a 9.5/10 performance from Tristan Muyumba and Xande Silva making a bicycle kick clearance because it was the coolest thing to do at the time. But it ended up being nothing more than a reminder that this team is hellbent on finding ways to sabotage their own success.

This isn’t the kind of game you should lose.

Via Old North State Soccer

In fact, on paper, it’s maybe Atlanta’s best performance of the season. But, at some point, this team has to figure out how to avoid committing seppuku for no reason and how to kill games off when they have the chance. None of the stats and tactics matter until the team lets them matter.

How do you fix it? I don’t know. Is it fixable? I want to say “probably?” but it feels like we’ve been saying that for a while. It has to be frustrating to watch as a fan because it’s very frustrating to watch from an analysis perspective. Maybe one day it will all click though and Atlanta will stop taking a break from playing decent soccer to dive headfirst into a pile of Legos. Until then, I’ll just be stuck here talking about what could have been based on things like “stats” and “the eye test” when all that really seems to matter is whether or not Atlanta United makes one or two or three hypercritical mistakes a game.

Anyway…

An objective reason to believe this actually went pretty well

I mentioned that this might have been, for better or worse, Atlanta’s best performance of the year on paper. I’ll dig into the numbers in a second, but let’s talk quickly about the “why?”