New York City FC continues to take shape under manager Pascal Jansen. The team shows glimpses of change despite coming from a goalless draw against the Columbus Crew. From more physicality and aggressiveness in every play to a more vocal manager on the sidelines, any change for the better is a good change.
Unfortunately, the season doesn’t stop, and the next challenge was against Atlanta United. While it’s always difficult to gain results on the road, there’s always the opportunity to correct your mistakes and showcase any improvements.
Atlanta United was looking to get out of the recent winless run. In addition, they recently saw Miguel Almiron’s return. Needless to say, they also had Ronnie Deila facing his former team for the first time. No matter how you look at it, Atlanta had an unwritten advantage.
New York, however, saw the return of their star player, Alonso Martinez, following the international break. On paper, it seemed to be a match filled with back and forth, but it only took a few minutes to see that mistakes would take center stage during this match.
Both teams took a long time to settle on the field. But in the end, it was more of a “one-half for each team” kind of game. New York City had a solid first half from my perspective. There were moments were they controlled the game and could have easily scored at least 3 goals given the amount of chances they created. Unfortunately, Atlanta leveled the game towards the end of the half. Nevertheless, sensations were good and expectations grew towards the second half.
Things were set for a surprisingly comfortable win by the 50th minute. Two serious mistakes from the Atlanta defense saw Alonso Martinez win a penalty, and Hannes Wolf was quick to tap in a turnover near the box.
The narrative until then pointed out that we were seeing two versions of the same team. One with Alonso Martinez on route to breaking his goalscoring heroics while making the team look aggressive. The other version saw a team without ideas and attacking power that relied on Matt Freece to hold down a result. If that were to be the case, and should the team lose Alonso for a prolonged period, there’s nobody on the team who can take on that responsibility at the moment.
Atlanta would stage a comeback within 11 minutes of New York’s third goal. Keaton Parks either didn’t read the play, or it was just one of those unfortunate deflections.
Whatever the case was, the 2 goal advantage was cut down to 1. Atlanta took advantage of the momentum and started exploding the wings. Fast counterattacks that were too difficult to deal with saw Miguel Almiron score the equalizer by the 75th minute.
Atlanta sealed the comeback in the 83rd minute after a long ball by Brad Guzan took Thiago Martins and Matt Freece by surprise. Some say Martin was at fault, some say Freece was in the wrong. Regardless of who you side with, once you see the play, a neutral would give props to Emmanuel Latte for following the play.
Atlanta walked away with 3 points and left New York City stunned. There are ways to lose a game, but this one is not in the books. With the team returning home next weekend, it will be interesting to see how the team bounces back from this kind of result. It’s still very early in the season; another way to look at it is to say that it’s best to go through these mistakes early on, rather than in the decisive stages. The team now prepares to face Minnesota on Sunday at Yankee Stadium.