Atlanta United’s players were tired in the waning minutes of their eighth game in 24 days.
Manager Gerardo Martino was critical of a referee who didn't pull out a red card on a late and dangerous tackle of Hector Villalba in the first half, and then later ejected an Atlanta United player after appearing initially not to want to make a call.
The Atlanta United roster was depleted by two more injuries, forcing Martino to use a third-string fullback and fourth-string goalie in the final minutes of a key game.
Still, Atlanta United fought back on goals from Villalba and Julian Gressel and was just a few minutes from securing a win that would push the team into second place in the MLS Eastern Conference.
Things then fell apart.
Minnesota United scored two goals in the final six minutes that were too easy: a Christian Ramirez ricochet in the 90th minute and a Kevin Molino header in the sixth minute of stoppage time to hand Atlanta United a 3-2 loss, its first at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Abu Danladi scored Minnesota’s first goal.
“We were tired, obviously,” captain Michael Parkhurst said. “It’s been a long few weeks, but a successful few weeks. We come out of it with just one loss. Obviously, we are disappointed about tonight. We gave it a heck of a fight to come back — down a man, down a goal. We’re disappointed that we couldn’t hold on for the last five or six minutes.”
Here are five observations about the game:
The injuries and others missing. Atlanta United played without five of its regular starters who were either missing because of injuries, rest or call-ups to national teams for upcoming World Cup qualifying games.
The missing were goalkeeper Brad Guzan, who is with the U.S. men’s national team, right fullback Anton Walkes, who was given the game off, left fullback Greg Garza and attacking midfielder Miguel Almiron, who have hamstring injuries, and striker Josef Martinez, who was called up by the Venezuelan national team.
With Andrew Carleton and Chris Goslin with the U.S. Under-17 national team, and goalkeeper Alec Kann (quad) and Brandon Vazquez (hamstring) also injured, Martino had 20 players from which to choose 18 on Tuesday.
Martino went with a mostly standard 11 with one exception: Kenwyne Jones started at striker. It was his first start since May 7 at NYCFC. He missed a significant portion of the summer because of an injury sustained while with the Trinidad and Tobago national team. He came off the bench to play in Atlanta United’s previous three games, with Martino saying after one that Jones did everything asked of him in that role.
However, he was forced to use one of his three subs in the 44th minute when Mikey Ambrose replaced Chris McCann, who has a “leg injury,” according to Martino.
Presuming McCann has suffered an injury that will force him to miss time, Atlanta United is down to fullbacks Walkes, Ty Mears, Mark Bloom, Ambrose and Andrew Wheeler-Omiunu. Walkes and Mears have combined to start 31 games. Bloom has two league starts this season. Ambrose, who came on in the second half Tuesday, has one start.
Playoff standings. With the loss, Atlanta United stays in third place in the MLS East. It has two games to overtake NYCFC for second place. If the Five Stripes finish in second, they will receive a bye in the first round of the playoffs. If they finish third or lower, they will play a knockout playoff game at home on either Oct. 25 or Oct. 26. The winners will advance to Eastern Conference semifinals, which start either Oct. 30 or Oct. 31 and conclude Nov. 5. The conference finals are Nov. 21 and Nov. 28 or Nov. 29. The MLS Cup is Dec. 9.
“I still think that if we take six points we have a very good chance of getting the second seed (in the playoffs),” Parkhurst said. “I think we’ll have the tiebreaker with New York City if we finish with the same the record. It’s there for us and even if it’s not, finishing in the top four is very important. We want a home game if we have to play the play-in game. It’s very advantageous that we have a home game. At the minimum, we want to finish top four.”
Calls that didn't go Atlanta United's way. Two plays in the first half could have resulted in red cards to Minnesota United players. On the first, Brent Kallman clearly elbowed Leandro Gonzalez Pirez in the head during a corner kick. On the second, Collin Martin tackled Villalba in the 30th minute. The ball was already five yards past Martin when he brought down Villalba. Martin received a yellow, but Martino said it was "absolutely" a red.
Martino was critical of referee Armando Villarreal after the match.
“That foul on Tito (Villalba) was a really important play in this match,” he said. “I think we are going to need not just video replay to manage the ref, but someone who manages the replay to check on that as well because they both missed it.”
Kallman caught Gonzalez Pirez in the jaw with a forearm during an Atlanta United corner kick. Again, no foul was called.
Atlanta United then lost goalkeeper Kyle Reynish, in for Guzan, to a red card in the 60th minute after he was late tackling Danladi just outside the penalty box. Alex Tambakis, the first announced signing in team history, came on for Reynish. It was Tambakis’ MLS debut.
A fan threw a water bottle at Villarreal as he was going to the VAR monitor to review Reynish’s foul.
Wrapping up the stretch of games. Atlanta United went 6-1-1 during the eight-game stretch that started on Sept. 10. After starting 5-0-1 with 22 goals scored, three allowed and five clean sheets, the team tied New England 0-0 at Gillette Stadium and were beaten by Minnesota.
When the span of eight games started against Dallas, Atlanta United was tied for sixth in the standings.
The compressed schedule is the result of a combination of factors that include the construction delays to Mercedes-Benz Stadium, an international break and Atlanta United wanting to play as many home games as possible.
“I understand that it’s a risk when we play so many games,” Martino said. “I said it to the players, I don’t remember having had so many games myself or even watching other teams go through a stretch of games like we did with these eight games in 23 days.”
The players admitted that they were tired, but didn’t want to use fatigue an excuse for the loss.
“I think we left it all out there,” Gressel said. “Certainly, you can see in the locker room today we’re all pretty tired at the end, which is normal. It’s just a little bad luck. We’ve had some luck before in this stadium and now it kind of turned on us a little – which happens. You know, that’s the game. That’s how it goes, sometimes, and unfortunately, we were on the wrong end of that today.”
What's next? A break.
The team will have the rest of the week off and will come back next week to start preparing for the Oct. 15 game at New York Red Bulls.
The Red Bulls are in sixth in the East and need a win to stay ahead of Montreal, New England and Orlando City, which it leads by three points.
“I think we all need some time off and we need to just recover from that tough stretch that we had,” Gressel said. “It would have been nice to go into that break with a win. I think then we would have recovered a little bit faster but we have enough time now to recover and then obviously get our minds and our bodies ready for the last two games and then the playoffs.”
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