Atlanta United focusing on three things in playoff push

Atlanta United manager Gonzalo Pineda has spent the past two weeks with his team focusing on three things in its push to make the MLS playoffs.

The first is the team’s mentality. Pineda wanted to see how the team would react after losing to Nashville 2-0 in its previous game.

The second is the team’s competitiveness. Pineda wants a team that will train hard.

The third is understanding and managing the players. He wants to develop relationships with the players so that he knows better how to motivate them and to put them in the best positions to succeed.

“So those three things were the main focus for the last two weeks,” he said. “And we are very happy about the outcome.”

Being happy with training doesn’t matter much if the team doesn’t produce results on the field. Its next chance comes Friday when Atlanta United hosts Orlando at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

Atlanta United has 27 points and is in ninth place in the Eastern Conference. The Five Stripes trail D.C. United by three points for the final playoff spot.

Pineda had only a few days to prepare the team for Nashville. While the team showed flashes, it didn’t play its best.

With more time has come a better understanding from the players of what Pineda wants. There have been a lot of video sessions and a lot of competitive games. Pineda said that mentality is very important to him.

“He likes to play front-foot, offensive, attacking-minded football and especially at home you know, we have a lot of home games coming up and we need to be on the front foot and attacking and getting goals to climb up the table and make the playoffs,” fullback Brooks Lennon said.

An example of putting the three elements together is the work spent in different formations, including the 4-2-3-1, a 3-4-2-1 and “false nine” during training on getting the ball into primary assist zones, according to Lennon and Pineda. PAZ isn’t something that Pineda invented but is something used in Seattle, where Pineda was an assistant previously, to increase the probability of scoring goals.

The idea is to hit passes from areas so that strikers have to make the minimal movement to score. As Pineda described it, a striker who has to jump and try to head the ball back across his body toward the goal is a low-probability scoring option. A pass that needs only to be tapped into the goal is a high-probability action.

That’s something used by the more successful clubs in Europe, according to Pineda. It sounds similar to what was used by previous manager Gerardo Martino with Julian Gressel and Josef Martinez. Gressel would hit looping crosses behind the defense but in front of the goalkeeper for Martinez to run onto.

It’s a bit different than some of the hit-and-hope crosses or passes the team has resorted to for parts of the past few seasons.

Lennon said that in two weeks of working on the different patterns of play to get into the PAZ, there have been positive results during training. So much so that Lennon, who has four assists in 20 appearances, hopes to reach at least 10 by the end of the season. There are 12 games remaining.

Pineda referenced many goals scored in an 11-on-11 scrimmage last week, as well as in this week’s training session. Goals scored by one wingback from a pass by the other wingback. Goals scored by Ezequiel Barco. Goals scored by different players from different places.

Pineda said that he was happy that Lennon remembered the name, but said really the name or acronym aren’t important.

“What is important is the mindset of attacking very specific areas in the final third that will give us more probabilities to score goals,” Pineda said.

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