Pineda: Atlanta United must play a perfect game

Atlanta United must play a perfect game in order to secure three points, a frustrated manager Gonzalo Pineda said on Saturday.

Pineda had just watched his team statistically dominate Columbus, only to lose 2-1 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The defeat snapped the team’s 13-game unbeaten streak at home. It has now won just one of its past eight games in MLS.

The defeat was the result of the team again not maintaining focus for 90 minutes. It gave up a goal on a set piece in the first minute. It was the first set piece of the game. It was the eighth goal allowed by the team on a set piece this season.

“It´s just the attention during games - in those moments is not happening,” Pineda said. “And we need to do perfect games to get three points. It feels like we have to take more chances. We have to create more chances. We have to have more possession because it feels bad after a good performance like today. I feel we had a good performance in the sense that we created enough chances to win the game. We did everything there, but we did not put enough attention when the score is 0-0. When we are not urgent, when we are not losing - it seems we don´t really pay attention to those little details. We need to reemphasize that in the training session. We always play as we train and we will make sure that in the next few weeks, we train very hard on that.”

The first goal may have been especially frustrating to concede because Pineda said the team focused during the week on improving in the “little details,” which included its set piece defending.

Now, Pineda implied there may be changes to the starting lineup.

“Every pass matters,” he said. “Every tackle matters. And we need to do better in everything. Because as I said before, it feels like we need to do perfect games, like no mistakes on the back at all, no mistakes at all. And then we need to create more chances than what we’re creating in order to continue to get more goals. So we need to try that. I’m going to try it and make that, to play a perfect game. Let’s start with that one against Miami. And in order to do that, we need to train better train harder. And the message is that we need to train very, very hard.”

The players are trying to be pragmatic about the lack of positive results. With Ronald Hernandez leaving the game in the opening minutes because of a knee injury, the team has had at least 18 different players sustain injuries this season.

“I don’t know if another team has had the same injuries that this team has had, the difficulties that we’ve had and even with that we’ve been fighting,” Josef Martinez said. “I’m the first one to get frustrated, because from the outside, not just today but also in previous games, to be winning and then lose the game, or be there and then concede goals and have to recover I think that is what we need to improve. We didn’t play bad in the second half but soccer is like that. Today we saw in the Champions League also, Liverpool dominated the whole game but experience won out. Here it’s also like that. Soccer in this league is strange and the one who plays best doesn’t always win.”

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Atlanta United’s 2022 MLS schedule

Feb. 27 Atlanta United 3, Sporting KC 1

March 5 Colorado 3, Atlanta United 0

March 13 Atlanta United 2, Charlotte 1

March 19 Atlanta United 3, Montreal 3

April 2 Atlanta United 1, D.C. United 0

April 10 Charlotte 1, Atlanta United 0

April 16 Atlanta United 0, Cincinnati 0

April 24 Miami 2, Atlanta United 1

April 30 Montreal 2, Atlanta United 1

May 7 Atlanta United 4, Chicago 1

May 15 Atlanta United 2, New England 2