Atlanta United vs. San Jose Earthquakes Illustrated Box Score: KANDINSKY DIDN’T PAINT BETTER CORNERS

Atlanta United had a tough time in this one for about 90 minutes. San Jose was getting decent chances while the home side couldn’t get things working in the final third. There was a missed penalty as Atlanta traded away their usual penalty taker in the offseason.

Things were pretty tricky otherwise as Jeremy Ebobisse scored early and Cristian Espinoza caused a lot of problems for the backline.

BUT NONE OF THAT MATTERED BECAUSE IT TURNED OUT THAT WEHEN JONATHAN MENSAH CAME OVER FROM COLUMBUS HE BROUGHT ALONG THE INABILITY TO HOLD A LEAD AFTER THE 75TH MINUTE.

Soccer games are sometimes 97 minutes long and the Five Stripes needed every single one of them to come away with a 2-1 win.

Going into the game the midfield was... concerning. Between Sosa, Sejdic, Ibarra, and Rosetto there’s four flavors of OK. It seemed like one of the answers to how the team might overcome this was by having a no. 9 to hold things up a bit and get the more creative players on the ball. It didn’t seem like much of that twas happening. Instead there was this:

Chapter 5 of Inverting the Triangle is titled: The Round Donut Theorem. Basically the theory goes that you can play a game with a questionable midfield as long as Thiago Almada scores on a training ground corner and then scores one of the most iconic goals in Atlanta United history this side of Kevin Kratz.