Atlanta United strayed from their usual style and still ran over the Red Bulls

In a battle between teams adjusting tactically, Atlanta United proved too much in the Eastern Conference finals first leg against New York.

Atlanta United were too good. Against a team that has historically bested them with a deadly full-field press, Atlanta committed to building out from the back rather than playing their normal, more counter-attacking game. And for the first time, New York chose not to press, attempting to pre-empt Atlanta’s counter-attacking threat. In a battle of tactical rearrangements, the Five Stripes won 3-0.

It was bold from Tata Martino, to focus his attention on keeping the ball and dictating the game through midfield. It could easily have backfired. Atlanta have evolved into more and more of a counter-attacking side, one that attempts to draw opponents out and then launch Miguel Almiron into space.

But in the first leg of the Eastern Conference finals, the Five Stripes played something of a 3-5-2 formation and quickly established a wide, aggressive possession shape. The center-backs spread wide and Tata charged Eric Remedi with defensive midfield responsibilities. Darlington Nagbe ran the midfield with the ball, bouncing around and distributing forward.

This look, with Julian Gressel acting as a connecter upfield behind Almiron and Josef Martinez, has become common for Atlanta in the last couple of months. But rarely has Tata emphasized possession this much — everything for Atlanta revolved around that wide possession shape.

Chris Armas and the Red Bulls also strayed from their tactical norm. Rather than playing on the front foot and trying to win the ball up the field, they sat in a compact 4-2-3-1 shape as a precaution against Atlanta’s deadly counter-attack. It was a calculated move on the road.

These Atlanta-Red Bulls games always end up as battles between tactical philosophies. It’s been pressing vs. counter-attacking, and the tactical story of the games have revolved around Atlanta’s attempts to free their prodigious attackers.

Recently, their strategy has been to reduce the quotient of prodigious attackers and instead rely on Almiron and Martinez to conjure magic and focus instead on controlling everything else. Gressel is perfect for basically every role, so tasking him with both tracking back and keeping up with Almiron and Josef up front makes sense.

They showed how well they can stretch themselves into other styles of play on Sunday. Their possession was effective, and while the Red Bulls’ shape was compact, it was too simplistic in defending from the front. New York struggled with when to step and when not, opening further gaps for Nagbe in midfield. Martinez’s goal to open the scoring displayed this weakness:

No one stepped to Larentowicz’s cross. The Sean Davis-Tyler Adams midfield pairing covers ground, but they (and especially Davis) didn’t look as comfortable without the license to bomb forward in the press.

New York, partially as a result of Atlanta’s effective possession, struggled to gain traction. Even as Armas has emphasized keeping the ball since he took over midseason for Jesse Marsch, the Red Bulls create their chances by winning the ball up the field. They didn’t do that in Atlanta, and though that was by design, they couldn’t replace the chance creation their press typically provides.

Atlanta tilted their possession to the right side of the field, trying to exploit left-back Connor Lade, who was replacing stud defender Kemar Lawrence. Parkhurst’s pass map (not Gonzalez-Pirez’s, disregard the tweet below) says as much:

With wing-back Franco Escobar ruthlessly attacking him, Lade struggled. It’s hard to imagine Lawrence would have been a similar weakness. Penetration down that flank drove Atlanta’s attack, and opened slivers in the middle for Gressel’s smart passing and Almiron’s darting dribbles.

In this week’s second leg, back in New Jersey, the Red Bulls promise to come out guns blazing They’ll need a historic comeback to erase that disastrous first leg. Atlanta adjusted seamlessly to an opponent that had given them so much trouble in the past. The Red Bulls weren’t quite good enough.