The Benz Is Worth One Point

The 69th minute. Breel Embolo turned inside, squared it, and Miguel Almirón hit it first time from the middle of the box. One-all, and for a quarter of an hour Mercedes-Benz Stadium had something to hold onto.

It did not hold.

Tom Barlow put Cincinnati back in front on 84, finishing Kyle Smith's delivery. Kévin Denkey got his second in the seventh minute of stoppage time, Ender Echenique the provider. Atlanta United 1, FC Cincinnati 3.

Ninety minutes. Nil-nil at the break, ahead at no point in the match, beaten by two.

Now the part I owe you, because I left a question open last month and tonight has answered it.

The third data point

In September, after nineteen shots produced a goalless draw at Audi Field, I wrote that the profile was not bad luck but identity. Then I hedged it in my own notes, and the hedge was fair: nineteen shots and nothing, set against seven shots and two goals, is a contradiction. A contradiction needs a third data point, not a rhetorical choice.

Here is the third data point.

Atlanta United took sixteen shots tonight. Six were on target. The whole lot came to about 1.13 expected goals. Evan Louro, the Cincinnati goalkeeper, saved five of the six that reached him.

Denkey took six shots on his own. They were worth 1.22.

One centre-forward generated more expected goal value than the entire home side. That settles it. This is not a team that creates and misses. It is a team that shoots.

Giuliano Galoppo had more attempts than anyone in an Atlanta shirt — four — and the four came to 0.09 expected goals between them. Put 55.7 per cent of the ball alongside that, and 428 completed passes, and seven offsides, and you have the whole shape of the thing: plenty of possession, plenty of volume, and nothing sharp at the end of any of it.

The ball doesn't lie.

One point

There is a second number, and I had not looked at it properly until tonight.

Atlanta United have played fourteen league matches at Mercedes-Benz Stadium this season. They have fourteen points from them — four wins, two draws, eight defeats.

From fourteen matches on the road, they have thirteen.

One point. Across an entire season, that is what this building has been worth. Not a fortress, not an edge, not even a tiebreaker. One point of difference between playing here and playing anywhere else.

The last home win was 23 August, against Sporting Kansas City. Forty-eight days ago. Four home matches have gone by since: defeat, defeat, draw, defeat.

Back to November

Which takes me to the 6th of November last year.

That was the day the club appointed Gerardo Martino for a second time — the manager who won this club the 2018 MLS Cup, brought back to restore front-foot football and a building that meant something to visiting teams. The idea was never complicated. Have the ball. Go forward. Make the Benz a place nobody enjoys.

Tonight his team had the ball. Fifty-five point seven per cent of it. Sixteen shots. One goal and about 1.13 expected goals to show for the lot.

The idea and the evidence have come apart. Possession is not penetration, and an identity you can describe is not the same thing as one you can watch.

My own card

I should mark my own card too. On Thursday I argued that Cincinnati's single away win in fourteen was the best chance Atlanta's home record was ever going to get.

I stand by the fixture read. I was wrong about what Atlanta would do with it. Cincinnati took their second away win of the season here, in this building, and they ended a six-match run without a victory while they were at it.

What is left

Twenty-seven points from 28 matches. Fourteenth of fifteen in the Eastern Conference. Six matches still to play, and the ninth and final playoff place sits up on 36 points with four clubs stacked in between.

The arithmetic is not finished. It has just stopped arguing with anybody.

Six matches, then, to answer the only question still worth asking: whether this is a team still becoming something, or simply a team that shoots.