Though moments of individual brilliance enabled Atlanta United to rescue a 3-3 draw with Montreal on Saturday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, manager Gonzalo Pineda wasn’t pleased with his team’s performance.
While he liked that the team showed the fight necessary to rally from two goals down – something Brooks Lennon, who hit the tying goal, said likely wouldn’t have happened last season – that they were in that position to need that shouldn’t have happened.
Pineda and the players now will get two weeks to figure out how to get the team to stop switching off mentally, which happened during a 14-minute stretch in the first half Saturday in which the team gave up three goals.
“This game wasn’t well,” Pineda said. “There’s no denial in that. After the first goal we fell off, and we started to do things that we shouldn’t do. We ended up giving the rivals the opportunity to outdo us, however, I am proud of how we ended because it demonstrates to me how the team will never give up and that they are capable of overcoming obstacles under pressure, but that doesn’t make me forget about what happened throughout the game earlier. There will be corrections, more training and understanding that there’s a lot of competition out there. In this field if you don’t do your best, someone else will take your place.”
It would be comforting if Saturday’s lull was an aberration.
It isn’t.
It is a trend going back before Pineda was hired last summer.
The good news for the team is it is learning to overcome its mistakes. Three times in its past five regular-season games it has rescued a good result, either a win or a draw, from a poor performance.
The bad news is the team is too talented to keep making the same mistakes again and again.
And it was lucky Saturday. It finished with an expected goals of 0.71 to Montreal’s 2.94. It finished the game with 10 men after Dom Dwyer’s inexplicable red card in the second half.
Montreal’s first goal Saturday was helped by mistakes so bad by Atlanta United that it was almost funny. It started with a corner kick by Atlanta United and ended with two Montreal players facing Brad Guzan.
Two more goals followed.
“We've had guys step into different positions that they really don't play and step up and be successful for us. If we have players that can do that, when we have a full squad firing, we're going to be dangerous."
“Miscommunication on our part,” Lennon said of the corner. “When we were scrambling a little bit on the broken play, I think we could have just kicked it out of bounds or had a little bit of clinical decision-making. Just a bad mix-up on our part, and those are things that we’ll clean up. I think in the 15-20 minutes of the first half, we just kind of lost our way, and we weren’t breaking lines. We just kind of got away from our style.”
The team made adjustments at halftime.
Lennon described his teammates as agitated in the locker room. They didn’t know where the game was going.
“But to be able to turn that frustration and anger into a result is a different story,” he said. “You can be angry as long as you want, but you’ve got to perform on the field to be able to pull out a result, and that’s what we did.”
Another positive for the team is it has seven points from its first four games and still has yet to train with its presumed starting 11. Because of injuries and other issues, the team isn’t at full strength. Marcelino Moreno made his first start Saturday. Thiago Almada, who scored his team’s second goal Saturday, is still being integrated into the lineup. Emerson Hyndman has yet to play because he is recovering from last year’s knee surgery. Luiz Araujo will be out for several more weeks after suffering a hamstring injury in the first half of the first game. Santiago Sosa is still working on being 90-minutes fit.
“Different guys are going to have different injuries, and that’s what’s made this first run of the season special for us,” Lennon said. “We’ve had guys step into different positions that they really don’t play and step up and be successful for us. If we have players that can do that, when we have a full squad firing, we’re going to be dangerous.”
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Atlanta United’s 2022 MLS schedule
Feb. 27 Atlanta United 3, Sporting KC 1
March 5 Colorado 3, Atlanta United 0
March 13 Atlanta United 2, Charlotte 1
March 19 Atlanta United 3, Montreal 3
April 2 at D.C. United, 7:30 p.m., BSSO/BSSE
April 10 at Charlotte, 1:30 p.m., ABC, ESPN Deportes
April 16 vs. Cincinnati, 6 p.m., Peachtree TV
April 24 at Miami, 1 p.m., ESPN
April 30 at Montreal, 4 p.m., BSSO/BSSE
May 7 vs. Chicago, 6 p.m., BSSO/BSSE
May 15 vs. New England, 2 p.m., ESPN
May 21 at Nashville, 7:30 p.m. FOX
May 28 vs. Columbus Crew, 7 p.m., BSSO/BSSE
June 19 vs. Miami, 4 p.m., ESPN2
June 25 at Toronto, 7:30 p.m., BSSO/BSSE
June 30 at New York Red Bulls, 8 p.m., BSSO/BSSE
July 3 at NYCFC, 5 p.m., BSSO/BSSE
July 9 vs. Austin, 7 p.m., BSSO/BSSE
July 13 vs. Real Salt Lake, 7:30 p.m., BSSO/BSSE
July 17 vs. Orlando, 3 p.m., ABC
July 24 at L.A. Galaxy, 9:30 p.m., FS1
July 30 at Chicago, 5 p.m., BSSO/BSSE
Aug. 6 vs. Seattle, 3 p.m., ABC
Aug. 13 at Cincinnati, 7:30 p.m. BSSO/BSSE
Aug. 17 vs. New York Red Bulls, 7:30 p.m., BSSO/BSSE
Aug. 21 at Columbus, 6 p.m., FS1
Aug. 28 vs. D.C. United, 4 p.m., UNIV
Aug. 31 at Philadelphia, 7:30 p.m.
Sept. 4 at Portland, 5:30 p.m., FOX
Sept. 10 vs. Toronto, 7:30 p.m., BSSO/BSSE
Sept. 14 at Orlando, 6 p.m., BSSO/BSSE
Sept. 17 vs. Philadelphia, 3:30 p.m., UniMas
Oct. 1 at New England, 1 p.m., UniMas
Oct. 9 vs. NYCFC, TBD, BSSO/BSSE
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