The Philadelphia Union will try to continue their climb up the Eastern Conference standings when they visit sputtering Atlanta United on Sunday afternoon.
The Union (10-5-4, 34 points) have won eight of their last 11 matches to charge up the East standings following a slow start.
After a 4-1 win over Inter Miami at home last weekend, the defending conference champions entered Saturday in fourth in the East.
Julian Carranza scored his team-leading 10th goal in the victory against Miami to move into a three-way tie for third in the MLS goal-scoring race.
But unlike Miami, Atlanta has two of the league’s best offensive talents in attacking midfielder Thiago Almada and striker Giorgos Giakoumakis.
The latter is one of those players tied with Carranza with 10 goals. The former is in a three-way tie for the MLS assist lead with nine and will have the Union’s full defensive attention on Sunday.
“We’ll have to have multiple players knowing where he is at all times because he can hurt you a lot of different ways,” Philadelphia manager Jim Curtin said of Almada. “He can hurt you on the dribble, he can hurt you with a pass, and obviously as we’ve seen this year, he can hurt you in the run of play with shooting and also on free kicks.”
Atlanta (7-5-8, 29 points) has one win, one loss and five draws in its last seven matches. It has struggled mostly on the defensive end this season, including in a 4-0 defeat against the New York Red Bulls last weekend.
Atlanta manager Gonzalo Pineda’s side has struggled at times with giving the ball away in dangerous positions in its own half of the field. That has led to multiple goals allowed in seven of Atlanta’s last 11 matches.
Philadelphia will provide a chance to correct some of the mistakes made against the Red Bulls, a similarly high-pressing side, though Atlanta will again be missing center back Miles Robinson to international duty.
“The main part to me is being better on the ball. It’s always a solution to us,” Pineda said. “We cannot go into a game like Red Bulls or Philly and try to play the same style that they do because we’re going to fail on that.”
–Field Level Media
