We are back. As the mirrorball stood atop of the Home Depot lot as a beacon of hope among a fresh 2023 season and I sat in the same seat that I’ve settled in around 30 match days before, I was ready for some good ball. As the days of the Pineda era go on, I can see what this team wants to accomplish on the pitch, and how they go about each attack.
The first 56 minutes contained that exciting but stagnant ball that we are quite used to. Some well worked play from San Jose which tallied as yet another early goal conceded for the boys in red and black. Atlanta’s transition play was inspiring, but when slowed down, your dynamic playmakers in Almada and Araujo are forced to do too much. And we know exactly how that party goes, straight balls into row 41 from Luiz (warra pen as well!).
But in the 56th minute Derrick Etienne Jr. and Miguel Berry made their first appearances for Atlanta and started the inspiring 40 minute period of ball. Berry, like Conway before him, lacked service and space to really make an impact since most of our crosses were hit like a nice Austin Riley line drive into left, no freakin loft. The half chances continued, as San Jose slowed down their approach.
The 80th minute saw Luis Abram and Amar Sejdic come on and the team hit another level. Sejdic came on and within a minute registered a shot on goal I could’ve saved with my eyes shut, but that 1 shot was more than Rossetto could muster in 80 times the minutes. Lennon had a great chance with his left that beamed past the goal like a frisbee zooming towards a bystander in a park.
Now as San Jose put on a diving performance only rivaled by the rats in Philadelphia, Atlanta was rewarded by a fair amount of stoppage time. Those same divers decided to leave the best player in the world wide open on top of the box on a corner kick, so he just decided to bin that ball in the corner like how you bin the box of mac and cheese in the corner of the cabinet. I was so happy that my good friend Thiago Almada scored a banger that I was content with leaving with a point. But the magic decided to take over and give Atlanta a free kick in the last minute of the match (warra script!). What ensued was possibly the most insane, ridiculous, emotional, and best moment in my history of going to Atlanta United matches. As I reached the heights of the highest vertical jump in combine history, the pure pandemonium of Mercedes Benz Stadium was a little too insane. The next few minutes both of my hands were stuck to the top of my head as I could not believe we somehow won that crap. Way to give us the most emotional moment of the darn season in matchweek 1.
Ok onto the boring crap now…
Somehow I don’t have a simile to describe Almada’s performance, oh wait, his performance is like when you are about to finish a party size bag of cool ranch Doritos and the last chip has a higher concentration of cool ranch stuff than humans in the dog pile after Gutman’s goal vs Seattle last year.
Ok onto the actual boring crap…
I really loved how Ibarra played, so impressed by his resilience to not only recover, but win the darn ball back. Sejdic also came in and showed me yet again why he should start, Etienne Jr. brought energy that Wiley tried but couldn’t quite produce, and Lennon and Gutman showed how critical they are to this club in the first match of the year. Guzan and Robinson with their first matches in a long time was also great, they played really well too.
Overall happy with this match, you take the 3 points and get ready to cook when you got your guys starting. See y’all next with 3 more points after we smash Toronto.
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