Baseball is currently in the dumps with the lockout between the players and owners, so that leaves Basketball and MLS soccer for sports fans across the country to watch. Yesterday, the Atlanta United opened their MLS season at Mercedes Benz Stadium in downtown Atlanta in front of 67,000 plus fans as the hosted Sporting Kansas City. Atlanta jumped out of the gate fast within the first 20 minutes to go up 1-0 as Luiz Araujo scores from a beautiful assist from Josef Martinez. Araujo would later leave the game with an apparent hamstring injury, which he suffered on the goal he scored.
In injury time during the first half, newly acquired just this past Tuesday, Dom Dryer, made a solid first impression to the home crowd as he scored the second goal for Atlanta against the team that put him on the map and made him a household name in Kansas City. But not on this day, this day he is with Atlanta.
In the 89 minute, game basically decided unless the United just wanted to screw it up, 17 year old Caleb Wiley had checked in just a bit before, broke away that led to his first MLS score and put the United up 3-1…game over.
Overall, it was a great showing by the team as they held a tight 2-1 lead before scoring late to seal the deal. Last year the team seemed to go up early, then break late to either give up a tie or lose late. Hopefully this year now that Manager Gonzalo Pineda gets to begin the season as the man in charge, there will be a different outcome with the team. Pineda was hired as their fourth manager just this past August. This team has been so inconsistent during the last few seasons not having a steady hand to lead since Tata Martino, where he lead the team to the MLS Cup in 2018.
United will get a few days rest and will take on the Colorado Rapids in Colorado on Saturday, March 5 at 6:00pm.
Header photo courtesy of Major League Soccer
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