ClapWe’ve spoken a lot about how the highs and the lows come together in equal measure in this game, and that’s honestly something that we believe in pretty strongly. Nobody can ever predict one way or another whether things are going to go well or badly for a team, and because of that, you simply have to be prepared for everything that could come your way.
Atlanta United fans have been forced to face this reality in a manner that we do not believe they were ready for. Not even close. They had the highest of highs last season when they captured the MLS Cup, putting on clinical performance after clinical performance on their way towards a really historic moment for the MLS. It was great, and even if you hated them, you simply had to respect them.
The odd split
However, as we’ve already noted pretty recently, they’ve had a bad start to the campaign this year and there’s a lot of pressure on them to improve. As such their game against Colorado, who are also pretty bad (this season), was met with some serious anxiety from some supporters. In the end, though, as reported by MLS Soccer, they were able to come away with the narrow 1-0 victory.
In most other established leagues around the world that’d be seen as a really professional victory that gets them back on track, because regardless of who the opposition is, they’ve been able to get the job done. As you can see by this report from Soccer America, however, there’s still a lot of negativity around this franchise that they just can’t seem to shake.
In our opinion, it really does feel like jealousy plays a huge role here. On the one hand you’ve got fans of opposition teams and general pundits, all of whom like to tear down success stories. Why? Probably because they’d like to see themselves in that position, but more importantly, because it makes for a good story.
The good and the bad
Then you’ve got Atlanta fans and representatives themselves, who are jealous of what the team from last season was able to accomplish – even if they were a part of it themselves. Sure, you’ve got the bandwagon supporters who probably only just started to learn the rules of the game, but there’s also this weird ‘memory loss’ from what has quite literally just been and gone.
The Rapids aren’t a very good team, but right now that’s the level United are playing at, and they were able to overcome that challenge and pick up a big win. That is what matters more so than anything else that went down over the weekend for the ATL, and just because they didn’t stick five goals past them doesn’t mean the end of the world is coming.
What Atlanta should be doing is getting their heads back in the game, because they’ve got Sporting KC and Toronto coming up pretty soon. That’s not exactly going to be a walk in the park by any stretch of the imagination for either fixture, and weirdly enough, it is starting to seem like the narrow wins are more important to move on from than the losses.
