Atlanta United ready for Inter Miami in Game 2 of MLS playoffs

Rested and perhaps more relaxed, Atlanta United is ready for Saturday’s do-or-don’t moment.

If Atlanta United defeats Leo Messi and Inter Miami in the second match of its best-of-three playoff series at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, its season will continue for at least one more game.

If Atlanta United doesn’t, eight days after it was beaten 2-1 in the first match, its perplexing season, one that has included the firing of its manager and technical director, the sale of its two best players and only two win streaks, will end.

“This is where they wanted to be,” interim manager Rob Valentino said Thursday. “The way we got here was probably not how everybody drew it up, but the resilience in the team to keep fighting, to keep showing up every day, I think that they’re in a great place. We’ve got a tough task on Saturday, but we’re at home, we feel confident that there’s going to be a good crowd there, and it’ll be a joy on Saturday night to just go and play free and enjoy the moment.”

Saturday’s will be the fourth must-win match of its past five. It obviously passed the first three, defeating the Red Bulls, Orlando in the regular-season finale and Montreal in the wild-card round before facing Inter Miami. The past three matches were inexplicably squeezed into seven days by MLS and Apple, its streaming partner.

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Atlanta United was exhausted when it played Inter Miami in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Oct. 25. If not for goalkeeper Brad Guzan, its defeat could have been much worse. But, in another MLS/Apple quirk, Atlanta United could have lost 8-1 and the goal difference wouldn’t matter in this series.

Valentino has seen the difference in training this week.

“I just felt like there was a whole different buzz and energy to them,” Valentino said. “They’ve got sleep, they’ve got proper nutrition, they just got rest. They look like they’ve got a little bit of a chip on their shoulder in a way of like, ‘Hey, come on, guys, like, we’ve got to go after this. We’ve got one game, and that’s the only one we’re focused on.’”

Feeling good and playing well aren’t a guarantee.

To play well, Alexey Miranchuk, who played in similar situations at Atalanta in Italy, and Dax McCarty, who has played in a few in 19 seasons in MLS, say they and their teammates need to find the balance between playing relaxed but focused.

They said they need to be patient when they have the ball.

“We will have more energy,” McCarty said. “We will have more life. We will have 70,000 people behind us. I’m sure a couple people will be there for Mr. Messi, but at the end of the day, we are at home, and we want to entertain our fans, and we want to bring it to a third game. And the only way to do that is to be aggressive. You can’t just hope to sit deep against them and pray for a shootout. That’s not the recipe for success against them. So we’ll go after it with everything we got.”

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Atlanta United’s 2024 schedule

Feb. 24 Columbus 1, Atlanta United 0

March 9 Atlanta United 4, New England 1

March 17 Atlanta United 2, Orlando 0

March 23 Toronto 2, Atlanta United 0

March 31 Atlanta United 3, Chicago 0

April 6 Atlanta United 1, NYCFC 1

April 14 Atlanta United 2, Philadelphia 2

April 20 Cincinnati 2, Atlanta United 1

April 27 Atlanta United 1, Chicago 1

May 4 Minnesota 2, Atlanta United 1

May 7 Atlanta United 3, Charlotte Independence 0 in U.S. Open Cup