Orlando City vs Atlanta United Inter&Co Stadium, Orlando Saturday, May 16, 7:30 PM Apple TV MLS Match Preview AJC's United coverage ATLUTD.com Soccer with Doug Substack Oh-lando home page Player Availability No suspensions. Injury reports here. Team Form ATL (3-1-8) ATL 1-2 LAG ATL 3-1 MTL TFC 1-2 ATL ORL (4-1-8) ORL 4-3 PHI MTL 2-0 ORL MIA 2-4 ORL ~ I'll at least be checking PBP but am unsure if I'll be able to watch, as I may be gathering with friends tomorrow night. On the upside, Orlando had a mid-week match and has surrendered the most goals in the league at almost 3 per match. On the downside, they have shown a lot more scoring capacity than Atlanta and have also looked better of late compared to some early struggles. (4-0-2) in their last six.) Midfielder Martin Ojeda is their everything, both with 9 goals thus far and a very aggressive drive in transition. Brazilian striker Tiago has not quite delivered in goals, but he's doing well enough to change the defensive shape to make way for other players to score. So, this will be like the highly movable object vs the very stoppable force. For Atlanta, Alzate and Hernandez are available again, but Miggy is still out. (Likely at Paraguay request he's being locked away ahead of the World Cup) Allegedly the mood from the Franklin Road this week was optimistic, in that they felt they understood their mistakes from last week and know they can do better. Granted, we've heard that before., but maybe Tata is better than his predecessors in recovery of form. Will be curious to see if either side looks to rest players ahead of the USOC match 4 days later. No names from the higher ups about prospective roster moves for the summer. True, there'll be some waiting for the WC to sort itself out, but I'd have to imagine that if they're gonna do anything then they should already have 1-2 names in mind. Doug mentioned in one post the possibility they might start leaning more into youth as one way to save funds for a possible newcomer, be it summer or winter. We'll see. Regardless, Vamos Atlanta! Smash the grapes!
Your starting XI tonight: Hoyos Jacob, Mihaj, Berrocal, Baez Muyumba, Reilly, Fortune, Galarza Saba, Miranchuk
39'. Saba with a shot outside the box, forces a save into a corner. Atlanta's first shot on goal. Everything for Atlanta is coming from the sides. Can't do anything down the middle. Standard operating procedure.
HT. 0-1. Atlanta doing some good things at the end of the half, and has a good number of corner kicks, but is finding it difficult to get the ball in the box without using crosses.
85'. Atlanta gets a CK for Orlando's keeper time wasting. Comes to nothing of course. But interesting. He's already been cautioned.