Martinez’s hat trick ties him with record

Josef Martinez’s hat trick in Saturday’s 3-1 win against Philadelphia not only tied him for the MLS career record, but also made him the third-fastest player in league history to reach 30 goals.

The Venezuelan needed just 34 games to accomplish both feats. It’s a pace far faster than the number of games needed by Stern John (55 games) and Diego Serna (124 games) to record five hat tricks.

“First of all, I’m just really happy that the team was able to get the victory tonight,” he said. “That’s the most important thing. It had been a couple games since we had won at home, so we knew that winning the game was important coming into tonight. Obviously when you are able to score, I am happy for the goals and happy that it helped the team. It’s time to enjoy the moment and then start thinking about the next game.”

Martinez’s hat trick came on a chaotic penalty kick in the 21st minute, a volley in the 49th minute, and another penalty kick in the 83rd minute.

Martinez changed up his routine on the penalty kicks. When approaching the ball, he used to take a jump step. He didn’t use that on either kick against Philadelphia.

“I know the goalkeeper,” he said. “I thought he was going to wait until the last second when I was kicking it and Miguel (Almiron) told me to just hit a rocket.”

Martinez leads the race for the Golden Boot with 12 goals. He is three ahead of Red Bulls’ Bradley Wright-Phillips and Columbus’ Gyasi Zardes.

Martinez said that his left hand, hurt earlier this season during training, is fine and that he continues to wear a brace/bandage as protection. It doesn’t mean he can use it to the play the guitar he received as a prize for being named the player of the game on Saturday. He has a good reason. “I need to learn,” he said. Some on social media have downplayed Martinez’s goal-scoring because they point out a good bit of his scoring comes against teams that are short-handed. Six of his goals this season have come against 10-man Vancouver and nine-man Philadelphia.

Atlanta United manager Gerardo Martino said a goal is a goal.

“I don’t know the statistics of all of Josef ’s hat tricks so I don’t know how he’s scored them,” he said. “But you have to score goals. Whether they’re penalties, against 11 players, 10 players, nine players… It’s always difficult to score goals. We lost two points against New England because we couldn’t score goals. So I wouldn’t take away any credit from Josef for scoring that many hat tricks in a year-and-a-half in the league.”

He said it: Atlanta United defender Michael Parkhurst on the red cards and VAR decisions going against Philadelphia:

“It’s bittersweet. You feel for them because it killed the game. The first one was just a little unnecessary, but you have to be smart. The second one, obviously, he just lost his cool and the game is over.”

On the difficulty the United had putting the game away:

“There were some different circumstances tonight. We were up two guys, and we just took our foot off the pedal. In the first half especially, we were trying to do it individually. We were dribbling too much, not moving the ball quick enough and we weren’t sharp enough. We were kind of like, ‘Oh, we’re up two guys. We can take it easy and cruise.’ Philly dug in and defended well. They had a lot of energy and made it difficult for us. We needed to be sharper and that was the message at halftime.”