It’s starting to look like more than just a bad start for Atlanta United. And that’s not good. At all.
The one-time champs started the season with promise. New players and a new coach, Ronny Delia, were supposed to put this club back into the winners’ stage again after several fruitless attempts since that memorable championship reign in 2018. But things have not gone according to plan so far for the Five Stripes this season.
The team has slid to 14th place in the MLS Eastern Conference standings, a long way from playoff contention. Out of fourteen total games this season, they only won two, lost seven, and had five draws. ATLUTD hasn’t won a game in the last eight meetings, and within those games, they were shut out four times, including the 0-1 loss to Philadelphia last Saturday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Anyone with eyes and a memory of seasons past can see this is not the team everyone expected to see at this stage of this season, and it doesn’t make matters any more reassuring when Coach Deila seems as flummoxed as everyone else watching this team as to how to get things right again.
After the meeting with Philly, he said the team’s players lacked a “killer instinct”, meaning they don’t have the will to win. That’s a disquieting indictment of a squad that had been making upgrades to boost its playoff chances, including adding who was touted as the team’s next big scorer, Emmanuel Latte Lath. He hasn’t scored in six matches, and everyone is waiting for a breakout game from him. They are still waiting.
Delia also said that the team isn’t as accurate or confident on the field as they should be. One example of that observation was various points in Saturday’s game where the team missed shot opportunities that presented themselves but were left unanswered. The Stripes let Philly get the best of them in the first half of the game, taking more shots (7) than Atlanta did (5).
Atlanta United has dug itself into a deep hole that will be difficult to climb out of. Every other team in the East is doing it better than they are (except bottom-dwelling Montreal). They aren’t going to get any easy opportunities to save their season any time soon, as they face the second strongest team in the East, Cincinnati, this Sunday, and the 5th seed Orlando City the following Wendesday.
The winless Five Stripes are looking like a team that needs more than a gut-check to get to where they want to be at the end of this disappointing season.
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