I'm not ready to have any takeaways from that game. FWIW, I thought GMS and Tinner had some great play together and seemed to be on the same page throughout, which is hugely important considering what Dome asks Anton to do through the course of the match. I felt a lot like the team was saving themselves for NJ in terms of energy, but they stayed compact tactically, which allowed them to get away with it. Excited to see what Taty develops into. ?Might be hard to hold onto him if he has another season like this.
Agree with most of this except we weren't very compact in the 2nd half. We were pretty stretched due to the long ball play. Every time CLB inevitably won the 50/50 ball, they came right back down our throats. The stats in the 2nd half are pretty clear evidence of that with all the chances they had.
Very excited to see Taty improve. As I've said in other posts, if he played stronger and flopped less, he'd be even better. If he could refine his touch and 1v1 dribbling, he'd be well on his way to world class and getting called up to the national team.. i would be so proud. He's still very young with lots of potential to improve. We have yet to see Taty's prime and it'll be exciting to watch him develop into it (HOPEFULLY with us here in NYC).
My takeaways:
GAS needs to build up his stamina before he can start.
Mitrita off the bench was actually very good! Except for two plays where on one he should have shot (when he was like right on top of the goalkeeper, before that he had an opening) and the other he should have passed to Heber (when he had the breakaway but had nowhere to shoot to)
Mataritta is trash
...But I understand why the team slowed down and let columbus in. Dome gave one of our best starting XI minus one or two guys . We have a derby on saturday. He played a good squad and probably told them to score one and then slow the F down
GAS needs stamina, but he needs to play to get that. Doesn't matter how much you run on a treadmill, there's nothing like game situation to get you match fit. He'll get there. He just needs time... and maybe a 20 degree drop in temperature. Like others mentioned, he's coming from Europe where the weather is just very different. It will take time for him to get acclimated physically.
Agree it was probably our best XI aside from Parks... unsure whether Mitri or GMS would get the start, but if ISI were healthy and in form, he'd be in that XI for sure. Dome preaches professionalism and finishing off a game, but he's never said to stop attacking. His mantra is "take the ball, pass the ball", which he got from Pep. Keep possession and move forward with purpose. There's no way I think Dome would ever tell the guys to score one and slow down cause a 1 goal lead is nothing... hell, 2 goals is nothing (Dome has said as much before).
In the second half, Columbus came forward and started pressing, and we didn't have answers. And this is becoming a trend. Atlanta pressed us, and while we avoided bad turnovers, were weren't able to advance the ball into their half of the field. Columbus presses us, and we go from dominating possession to having less than 50%.
Not a good problem to have with the Red Bulls in 2 days.
Exactly. This is where the "bravery" Dome talks about comes in. The weird thing is, I feel like this fear to play out under pressure only started in the last month or so. Before that, it was almost a given that Sean would play goal kicks short to Chanot/Callens. Not sure what's up with him lately.
