Blind Recap: Atlanta United beat New York Red Bulls in opening preseason scrimmage

Ah, preseason. A time for hungry soccer fans to crave any sort of news about their favorite team, only to be left with crumbs. If you’ve been a reader here for a while, you may remember that during special circumstances, like preseason friendlies not being live streamed to the public, we occasionally like to bring any and all info that can be obtained from the outside world and try and create a timeline for that match. We call it a blind recap.

NOTE: Please don’t take offense if you’re actually blind, however if you’re reading this article while blind that’s pretty amazing, however if someone is reading it to you, I hope you’re laughing at this terrible joke instead of getting angry.

Atlanta United took part in their first scrimmage of the 2020 preseason on Friday as they defeated the New York Red Bulls, 2-1, in a match featuring three 30-minute periods. Here’s every important piece of info we could find regarding the scrimmage.

According to MLSSoccer.com these were the initial starting lineups:

New York starting XI (4-4-2): Ryan Meara – Rece Buckmaster, Sean Nealis, Tim Parker, Patrick Seagrist – Florian Valot, Sean Davis, Chris Lema, Daniel Royer – Brian White, Niko Petridis

Atlanta starting XI (4-2-3-1): Brad Guzan – Edgar Castillo, Fernando Meza, Miles Robinson, Franco Escobar – Eric Remedi, Mo Adams – Brooks Lennon, Ezequiel Barco, Gonzalo Martinez – Josef Martinez

We promise those Red Bulls names are real and not made up by J. Sam Jones.

The Five Stripes’ first goal of the preseason was quite a nice one as nearly every player of the field had a touch before Brooks Lennon’s cross from the right flank floated over the head of a Red Bulls defender to Josef Martinez. The Venezuelan settled and slammed a finish past Not Luis Robles. Feast your eyes on this beauty:

The Red Bulls struck back quickly through Florian Valot in the 7th minute.

Video of the goal cannot be found, but Valot’s quotes to the Red Bulls team website make it seem like their press caused an issue for Atlanta leading to the equalizer.

“The goal, I think, it’s good counter-pressing for us,” noted Valot. “I think we got the ball back on the left side of the field. There’s a good run from Brian White, that opens up a good pass from Daniel [Royer], and I have time and space to take a first touch. Then I took a shot across the goal; I don’t think [Brad] Guzan dove on that. It was a good play.”

The game’s scoring would wrap up before the first 30-minute period ended thanks to Ezequiel Barco. The Argentine found himself with a great scoring chance that Ryan Meara stopped. However, the rebound fell to Barco and he popped it over the goalkeeper and into the net.

And that’s how the match finished and that’s pretty much all we know happened. No info was given on Atlanta’s substitutes.

Frank de Boer spoke after the scrimmage, calling the exercise “intense”. The team posted this 90 second snippet on their Twitter account:

Atlanta United play their second preseason scrimmage/friendly against the Philadelphia Union on Wednesday. We’re told that match will also not be live streamed but the remaining official friendlies, beginning next Saturday against IF Elfsborg of Sweden, should be.