Atlas 1 – 1 America

By: Alan | August 28th, 2008

It’s been a hectic week, but I was finally able to see a game, and a couple of things jumped at me from this tie:

Bottinelli was a great addition, you should have seen the way he blew past defenders leaving them on the pitch with broken ankles, which was aided by the bad turf.

There’s no real standard to refs, some will call it very easily others very strictly but I think there’s a lack of a true mean in which all refs will call it “more or less” the same. The ref in charge of this game, was very confusing sometimes refusing to call a play he had earlier awarded a yellow for.

Atlas needs to work on the fundamentals! Sanchez made three “lobs” without looking up once, which is why I hesitate to leave out the quotation marks. The whole team was missing 5m passes, getting in each others way in order to head the ball, etc. At one point Bottinelli drove the ball into America’s goal and couldn’t get rid of it because two of his teammates were in his way, unacceptable!

Lastly, and most importantly, Atlas needs to learn how to finish. At the time Atlas was scored on they had a 9-0 advantage in corner kicks. Last week, they dominated the whole game and still came away with a 1-0 loss. It seems like Atlas might be missing Marioni or someone to finish up at the opposing end.

However, all in all it wasn’t a bad game, it had it’s exciting moments and Ochoa had two good stops that saved America the 1 point tie. It was also interesting to see the crowd react to the return of Medina to el Jalisco sporting a different kit, in case you were wondering he was booed, thoroughly.

Atlas next game is on Sunday vs Pumas, and Atlas needs to earn a solid three points before this season starts to feel really long to them.