The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
UNITED'S NEW CHAPTER
Battle-tested Five Stripes finish playoff series strong in win.
The Illustrated Playoff History of Atlanta United is a brief tome. But being set in Atlanta, you know that even this virtual pamphlet had to contain a high concentration of bitter dregs.
Sunday, though, was an entirely new chapter. The second-year soccer team won a playoff game for the first time at home, and in the process won its first-ever playoff series.
It even scored multiple goals over the course of regulation time — in every way: penalty shot, free kick and a full-bore running kick — another playoff first inside Mercedes-Benz.
You must give Atlanta United credit for the way it went about dispatching New York City FC in the conference semifinal. Really, you must. Even if you consider soccer some sort of international conspiracy.
Coming into this second and final leg of the series with a game in hand and a one-goal advantage in this aggregate goal format, Atlanta United could have chosen to play a little high-level keep-away Sunday. It could have gone all conservative, trying to protect the lead rather than build upon it. Instead, Atlanta United stayed true to an identity the team began forming from Day One, coming out and pressing the action and, you know, keeping stuff interesting.
The 3-1 victory over NYCFC Sunday — completing the playoff sweep — was anything but careful and conservative.
And along the way, the match confirmed pretty much every
preconception held by the noisy rabble of 70,526 inside the Benz: That Atlanta United was the far more skilled of the two teams and that NYCFC was a troupe of ruffians, bad actors and whiners who deserved to be relentlessly booed.
Playoff soccer, the worldly and erudite Atlanta audience already has learned, is different from your everyday soccer. Playoff soccer is medium rare — cool and a bit bloody at the center. Regular soccer, especially in the MLS, where seasons last so long they really should be called regimes, couldn’t possibly stomach that kind of thing over such a long haul.
Playoff soccer is hard, darn hard. Atlanta United learned that a year ago when its surprisingly vigorous inaugural season abruptly ended with a one-game knockout loss to Columbus at home. Yes, a bitter loss, a game far more exciting than the 0-0 score at the end of regulation indicated. Atlanta United’s fate was thrown to the fickle winds of penalty kicks, and there it was blown away.
Atlanta United took all luck and chance out of the equation Sunday. There will be no such sudden pulling of the plug on this Atlanta United season. Winning and advancing Sunday, the Five Stripes have gone the necessary one more step than a year ago. They’re still trending.
The forecast for Sunday’s game was for aggression with a chance of contusion. Yes, soccer can be a rough game. And playoff soccer is supposed to bring out the best and the beast in teams.
Atlanta United’s fleet midfielder Miguel Almiron was the target for much of NYCFC’s bad intent, if for no other reason than he is the most frustrating player for an opponent to chase. And certainly, it was the threat of Almiron’s great speed that provoked the first yellow card on a NYCFC defender who chopped him down in front of his own bench.
The 24th minute featured a field littered with writhing bodies – midfield, front and side of the NYCFC goal — until finally a penalty had to be called when Franco Escobar was taken down by NYCFC’s Ismael Tajouri-Shradi. Enter Mr. Golden Boot, the MLS’s record-setting goal scorer Josef Martinez. His was a particularly graceful penalty kick, with a couple of mesmerizing dance steps and one big hop before he deposited the first goal into the net.
Drawing a second yellow card 41 minutes into the match, Almiron had the pleasure of bending a free kick from 25 yards out into the upper corner of the New York netting to make it 2-0 United.
All the right people put their signature on this breakthrough first playoff victory.
Goalkeeper Brad Guzan didn’t have it as easy as the first game of this series, when NYCFC got nary a shot on goal. Atlanta United even yielded a goal this day, but it could have been more had Guzan not channeled his inner big cat.
And it was Almiron and Martinez, the engines of this team all season, who conspired for the final goal of the evening, Almiron setting him up and Martinez finishing it off on a wideopen look at a goal that must have appeared as wide as the horizon.
Having already proven itself playoff-tough, all that was left afterward for Atlanta United was to wait out the winner of the other conference semi later Sunday night between the New York Red Bulls and Columbus Crew, to find out who has next.
There will be more playoff activity inside Mercedes-Benz this season — guaranteed. Which was particularly heartening given what the other tenant did Sunday up in Cleveland.