Twenty-Six Crosses and Three Shots on Target

Matt Edwards hit the right post in the 86th minute and for about half a second Mercedes-Benz Stadium sounded like a place where something was still available. It was three-nil at the time. Three minutes later Fafà Picault put a penalty into the bottom right corner, and the match finished 3-1 — a scoreline that looks like a contest in a results column and was not one here.

Inter Miami had seven shots. Seven. Five of them were on target and three went in.

Atlanta had twenty. Three were on target.

I have written about the shot count on this beat until there is nothing left in it. The volume is real, the quality is not, and that argument is settled and paid for. What I had never gone looking for is the mechanism underneath it. Saturday handed it over.

Atlanta United attempted twenty-six crosses. Four of them reached a teammate.

That is the match in one line, and it explains the other line. A side that sends twenty-two crosses which reach nobody does not generate twenty chances — it generates twenty attempts. Seven of Atlanta's twenty shots were blocked. Inter Miami made twenty-one clearances to Atlanta's eleven, and that figure is not a criticism of Miami. It is a description of what they were asked to do, over and over, from the same angles, for most of the evening.

### The economy at the other end

Germán Berterame headed in Luis Suárez's cross in the 45th minute, which is Miami's first real moment of the match arriving at the worst available time for a home side. Messi got the second in the 56th, left foot from the middle of the box, Berterame supplying it. He got the third in the 60th, left foot again, Suárez teeing it up on a break that Atlanta had opened by committing bodies forward.

Fifteen minutes, three goals. Two of Miami's five shots on target did not go in.

The thing I keep turning over is that Atlanta had the ball 44.6 percent of the time. This was not a side overrun. They completed 383 passes. They won it back eleven times by interception. The structure held well enough that Miami needed almost nothing to break it — and when a team is organised and still loses by two goals in its own ground, the problem is not the shape. It is what the shape is for.

Right now it is for crossing. Breel Embolo led the line and collected a booking in the 71st. Almirón and Miranchuk started either side of him. That front three is a centre-forward who cost a reported eighteen million dollars and two players who have carried this club's attack through two different versions of it, and the plan on the night was to get the ball wide and hit it. Twenty-six times. Four found a shirt.

Six weeks ago Atlanta drew 2-2 away at this same Inter Miami, Embolo's first start for the club, and took a point off a side that has since beaten New York City FC and put four past D.C. United. So the gap is not unbridgeable, and Atlanta bridged it in September with less of the ball than they had on Saturday. That is what makes the crossing a choice rather than a limitation.

Thirty points from thirty matches, and four still to play. Chicago Fire come to the Benz next Saturday, fourth in the East, and nothing about that fixture flatters this version of Atlanta United. But four matches is four matches, and the number to watch is not the shot count any more. It is the twenty-six.

If that figure comes down against Chicago and the three on target goes up, something in this side has been coached. If it does not, then Saturday was not a bad night. It was the plan.