The Scoreboard Said Two

The ninety-seventh minute at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Tyrese Spicer, an Orlando City substitute twenty-six minutes into his evening, turned a ball into his own net. Atlanta United 2, Orlando City 3. Scarves and Spikes described a thin crowd that thinned further after Orlando's third goal, and whatever was left of it had long since worked out how the evening ended.

That was Atlanta United's second goal of the night. No Atlanta player scored it.

No Atlanta player scored the first one either.

In the seventh minute a ball into the box found Breel Embolo. It came off him, deflected off David Brekalo, and went past Maxime Crépeau. The scoresheet records an own goal by Brekalo, because that is what it was. Atlanta's biggest signing of the summer got the last Atlanta touch on a ball that ended in the Orlando net, and he does not get to keep it.

Atlanta led for nineteen minutes on a goal that belongs to nobody in the home dressing room.

I wrote yesterday that Orlando's revival was a defensive story being sold as a Griezmann story, and ninety minutes later both halves of that sentence arrived at once: Orlando conceded nothing to Atlanta's forwards, and Antoine Griezmann scored twice, so the Griezmann story is the one that gets sold. Being right about it was worth precisely nothing. My club lost at home.

Forward, then.

Fifteen shots. Two on target.

That is not variance. That is not a night when it simply would not go in. Fifteen attempts, two of which made a goalkeeper move, describes a side that can reach the final third and do nothing once it arrives. Twenty-three crosses; seven found a teammate. Six offsides, which is its own small essay about timing. Orlando cleared their lines twenty-nine times and never once looked like a defence under duress. They had 59.5 percent of the ball and 661 passes to Atlanta's 436, and they spent the last half hour managing a football match rather than defending one.

Here is the number that will stay with me. Tonight was the ninth match this season, out of twenty-four, in which no Atlanta United player scored. On its own that is a bad but ordinary fact about a team on twenty-two points. The extraordinary part is the other eight. Every one of them reads 0-2, 0-1, 0-0. The grid tells the truth about those. Tonight is the only one of the nine where the results page will show a two beside Atlanta United, and it is the only one that lies.

Twenty-nine goals this club has scored all season. Two of them arrived tonight off Orlando boots — the only two own goals in Atlanta's favour in the entire campaign, both inside the same ninety minutes, in the one match where the forwards managed none.

Dos goles de limosna. Two goals handed over as alms.

And then the 78th minute, which I would like on the record. One minute after Griezmann's second, at one-three, Atlanta made three substitutions at once: Fafà Picault for Miranchuk, Enea Mihaj for Paulo Díaz, Sergio Santos for Embolo. The club's leading scorer this season and its marquee striker, withdrawn together, twelve minutes plus stoppage still to play, the goal that settled it barely sixty seconds old. That is not a tactical adjustment. That is a bench being emptied.

About Griezmann, briefly, because the numbers moved tonight and should be counted rather than assumed. Seven goals and three assists in nine MLS appearances since his debut on July 22. He has now scored in four consecutive matches. He is the scorer or the assister on ten of the eighteen goals Orlando have scored since the restart — still more than half, still from one man. I said yesterday I would not tell you he is the reason, and tonight has not moved me either way. What tonight quietly added was the other column: Orlando have conceded twelve in those nine matches, and two of the twelve they scored themselves.

There is a detail here I cannot stop turning over. The two Orlando players who scored for Atlanta tonight are not passengers. Tyrese Spicer has four goals for Orlando since the restart. David Brekalo has two. Six real goals between them in the window in which Atlanta's forwards have scored none against that defence. The men who put the ball into their own net tonight have been better finishers, in Orlando shirts, than anyone in an Atlanta shirt managed to be.

Twenty-two points from twenty-four matches. Fourteenth of fifteen in the East, above CF Montréal and nothing else. Ninth is the last playoff position, because nine qualify, and once Wednesday night's results were all counted, ninth is FC Cincinnati on thirty-one points from the same twenty-four matches. Nine points. Ten matches left.

So let me be careful with the arithmetic, because it is not the point and it is also still alive. Thirty points remain available. Atlanta United are not eliminated, and I am not going to write that they are. What I will write is that this stopped being a competition some while ago, and tonight was not the night that ended it. Tonight was the night that described it.

Ten matches remain, and the first is Saturday at Audi Field against D.C. United, who beat Columbus tonight and sit nine points above this on the same twenty-four matches.

The thing to repair is not the finishing. The finishing is a symptom, and everybody in the building could see it. The thing to repair is that on a Wednesday night in their own stadium, against the rival they measure themselves against, this football club needed the opposition to score for them. Twice. And still lost.