If you had to draw it up to be the most frustrating, most painful, most shake-your-fist-at-the sky kind of game for Atlanta United, you would have drawn it up exactly like that. The Five Stripes fell to Inter Miami 2-1 on Saturday night in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., thanks to two goals from —who else? — former Five Stripes legend Josef Martinez.
That's not the only reason for frustration, though. That's the part that hurts the most, but it's not the only thing that makes this one feel extraordinarily bleak.
We can start with the fact that, through about 55 minutes, Atlanta was the better team. They certainly weren't firing on all cylinders, but there were moments where they looked like a team with the kind of balance and cohesion going forward that's been rare as of late.
They started Derrick Etienne Jr. across from Caleb Wiley on the wings; that move appeared to give the team a boost in the final third. Interplay and connectivity showed up down both sides in a way that hasn't happened often with Luiz Araujo in the lineup. Amar Sejdic took over for Matheus Rossetto in midfield and immediately provided a boost in both directions. They looked better. Plain and simple. But they were lacking a sense of chemistry and crispness that tends to come over time instead of in the first runout of the year.
It felt ... close. Not there. But close. And the general trajectory of the night seemed far more encouraging than demoralizing. To the point where, before we move onto some more of the bad, we have to point out that the good tonight felt replicable. Like, with a little more time, it might be the proper setup for this team. Exchange Santiago Sosa for Franco Ibarra and bring back Giorgos Giakoumakis and you might have one of the best teams in the league. Heck, even Araujo on the left late in this one looked like a tweak for the better.
But that isn't enough. A mistake from Machop Chol handed Inter Miami and Josef a penalty, and Atlanta was suddenly chasing the game. And all of the positive signs dissipated and turned into nothing but "what could have beens" as the Five Stripes put together a miserable final product for the fourth straight game in all competitions.
We talked about the warning signs for this after the Chicago game. We talked about the need for continued changes to the roster after the Nashville game. So what do we talk about after this game?
I don't really know, but I think it involves preparing to watch this team struggle until those changes finally come. Yeah, I know I like to say "soccer is hard, road games in MLS are harder." However, we're talking about an Inter Miami team starting two homegrown teenagers in midfield, a team that has lacked quality for most of the season. By any measure, this is a bad loss. And that lack of quality from a bad Miami team and that bad team starting two kids in midfield make even the positives from certain moments of the game feel a bit like smoke and mirrors.
To what extent that last part is true is unclear. Maybe Atlanta regroups, trots out a similar lineup next week and puts it on Charlotte. It's totally possible in MLS. For now, though, all we have is wallowing. Atlanta United got beat by a bad soccer team and it came via their most historically cherished player finally putting it together for his new club. Patience will have to be a disappointing, infuriating and ultimately apathy-inducing virtue if Atlanta continues to make the same mistakes.
