RECAP: Atlanta United falls to Toronto FC in Eastern Conference Final

Atlanta, Ga. - That’s all folks.

The things that happened in the game that was played

The things that happened, happened quickly. At least at first.

Atlanta jumped on the board just four minutes in.

It appeared that Atlanta would jump out too a 2-0 lead inside the first eleven minutes when Pity Martinez took the ball down off a long pass from Jeff Larentowicz, then took a knock from Michael Bradley in the box. Josef stepped to the spot and.....

Uh oh. Well, still got a 1-0 lead let’s just keep them off the boa—

Uh oh.

After a stunning 15 minutes, both teams decided to slow things down a bit. The half ended 1-1. Toronto had just two shots to Atlanta’s six.

Not much changed in the second half. Atlanta kept searching. Toronto kept waiting.

In the 78th minute, patience paid off. Nick DeLeon broke the deadlock with a stunner.

From there it went as you would expect. Atlanta pushed. Toronto sat deep. (well. deeper.) And Atlanta couldn’t tie it up.

Atlanta put up 17 shots compared to Toronto’s four. But here we are.

Well, damn.

A Recap Thought: And you may find yourself in a beautiful house. And you may find yourself with a beautiful wife. Well...how did I get here?

That sucked. But it’s amazing how much it sucked.

I have no idea how this team ended up here. Somehow we went from a bunch of terrible, awful, no good very bad soccer at the beginning of the year, to a bunch of tabloid worthy and international news worthy PR disasters, to a couple of trophies in hand and this team outplaying their opponent on the edge of hosting MLS Cup.

We all stopped to complain about some things and then be happy about some things and then we ended up here. Sad about things and trying to remember, “What exactly were the things we were complaining about?” That’s......that’s some shit.

Look, the ending of How I Met Your Mother sucked. I’m not a “just be glad you had the journey” kind of person. And this ending sucked. And everyone deserved better. But there’s something to be said for having no idea how you got to somewhere good: You still got there.

I’ll level with y’all. The postgame and locker room quotes were bad. We could talk about how everyone said that they thought they played well and deserved a result and are looking forward to coming back next year. We could. But, come on, you already knew they said that. And now we have three months of waiting around and analyzing the fifth level of meaning behind what Frank de Boer said in a press conference in July. It’s horrifically inescapable.

So, for now, I think you can just be happy with how bad things are. Because somehow, against momentum, things became good enough to be bad again. And they might be good again before you even know how you got there.

I think this made sense.

See y’all next year.