Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
After road debacle, Union eager to show up vs. Atlanta
CHESTER » Among the myriad peculiarities of the Union’s trip to Atlanta June 2 was the unusual feeling that the club left MercedesBenz Stadium with. They’d incurred two red cards in the first half, conceded two penalties and lost 3-1 to host Atlanta United.
But they left Hotlanta not just lacking the vitriol that you’d expect between teams playing out an 11-v-9 situation, but having earned a modicum of respect from their hosts for their fortitude in keeping the game close.
The lack of animus between the teams frames Saturday’s rematch in strange terms. The Union aren’t looking for revenge on Atlanta exactly, since their rage that day was geared more toward referee Sorin Stoica, who won’t be in attendance Saturday and likely won’t make another trip to Talen Energy Stadium this season. But the two reds for dissent leave the Union out to prove something about their ability to hang with Atlanta this week.
“There is a feeling within the group that we do want to see at 11-v-11 against a top team in our league,” manager Jim Curtin said Thursday at his weekly press conference. “We respect them a ton. We can’t go in there with any fear. I think it was brief, the 20 minutes we played at their place in a hostile environment, we were actually decent and up for the game. Things changed on that night — we could talk for hours about that again, but we’ll move along. It affected our team, it affected the rhythm that we were in, so there’s an eagerness to have another opportunity against them on our home field.”
Saturday’s visit from Atlanta (7 p.m., 6ABC) is the first time the Union (6-8-3, 21 points) will be whole since that game in Atlanta. Alejandro Bedoya served a one-game ban, and Haris Medunjanin returns just in time from his three-game suspension. Borek Atlanta United midfielder Miguel Almiron scores his second goal in last week’s win over Orlando City. The danger of Almiron and the other Atlanta attackers will seriously test the Union Saturday. Dockal is also back after missing last week’s trip to Los Angeles for personal reasons after he and his wife welcomed the couple’s second child.
That Medunjanin’s first game back is against Atlanta seems apropos.
“Everybody knows what went wrong in the first game,” said Medunjanin, who agreed Thursday to a contract extension through the end of the 2019 season. “We are motivated to win this game and we play against the best team in the East, maybe all of the league, so I don’t think anyone needs motivation for this kind of game. Everybody is 100 percent. Everybody knows what’s on the line. If you want to achieve the playoffs, you need to beat a big team so now it’s a good test for us on Saturday to show everybody that we deserve to be in the playoffs.”
The Union catch Atlanta (11-4-4, 37 points) at an advantageous time, with the Five Stripes fresh off a loss Wednesday in Dallas, 3-2, on Tesho Akindele goals in the 86th and 88th minute.
The game arrives at an interesting juncture for the Union. With a trip to Chicago, the current occupant of the sixth and final playoff spot in the East, looming next Wednesday, the Union could use a result over Atlanta to vault into the road challenge. Or failure to get a win at home could pave the way for a skid on the heels of last week’s 4-1 demolition at the hands of Los Angeles FC.
For all the sting put into Atlanta’s legs Wednesday, the team has still collected the most points in MLS on the road this season (17, 5-2-2). Atlanta possesses the most explosive offense in MLS with 40 goals in 19 games. Josef Martinez’s 17 goals are only four behind the pace set by the entire Union team, though Martinez has played two additional games.
Between Martinez, Miguel Almiron (eight goals, eight assists), Hector Villalba (two goals, four assists) and Ezequiel Barco (four goals), Atlanta has one of the most fearsome front fours in MLS. That puts a heavy burden on the Union not to repeat the “youthful mistakes” it made defensively last week.
“The best defense is being good with the ball yourselves,” Curtin said. “… We have to do our best to limit those opportunities, to know where (Almiron) is, even when we’re in possession of the ball, because a lot of the great players have the tendency to find space and get open when you’re in possession and you feel safe and comfortable.”
The hosts came into the tournament ranked 70th in the world. Even after drawing a favorable group, expectations were minimal. Advancing to the knockout stage was deemed success enough by some. Then goalkeeper and captain Igor Akinfeev stuck out his left foot and stopped Spain’s final kick of a penalty shootout in the round of 16, and suddenly Russia had pulled off one of the bigger upsets in World Cup history. Croatia has one of the most balanced teams in the tournament , but the Russians believe their quarterfinal in Sochi is winnable. If that happens, Russia would be playing a semifinal — maybe even the final — in Moscow’s main stadium, and a country where soccer usually takes a distant back seat to hockey could go bonkers. NEW TERRITORY England won the World Cup one time, back in 1966. Sweden lost the final at home to Brazil in ‘58. Those are the only times any of the four teams playing Saturday has even made it to a World Cup final, but one of them will be playing at the Luzhniki Stadium on July 15 against 1998 champion France or Belgium.