Two of Atlanta United's 16 Goals Came Off Orlando City Boots

September 9th, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, seventh minute. Atlanta United lead, and the man who has just put the ball in their opponent's net is David Brekalo, an Orlando City defender.

Then, in the 90th minute plus seven, the match long gone, Atlanta get a second. Tyrese Spicer. Also Orlando City, though a forward, which is what a 90th-minute corner does to a team chasing a game.

Orlando City 3, Atlanta United 2, at home. Both of Atlanta's goals were scored by the other team.

That match is not sitting outside the story people have been telling about this attack. It is sitting in the middle of it.

### The split is real. It is also smaller than it sounds.

The number in circulation is 16 goals in Atlanta United's last 11 matches, and the number is correct. Atlanta have scored 16 since August 23rd, 1.45 a match.

The 20 matches before that hold 23 goals, 1.15 a match.

That is an improvement of 26.5%. A quarter, on a window somebody else drew. The rate holds if you move the line — 14 in the last 10, 18 in the last 12 — so the window is not doing the work.

The season total that travels alongside the 16 is 33, and it is 13 days and three matches out of date. Atlanta United have scored 39 goals in 31 matches. Three MLS clubs have scored fewer: CF Montréal on 36, Sporting Kansas City on 37, D.C. United on 38. Atlanta are fourth-fewest of 30, and they climbed there in 13 days by scoring six in three matches while the three clubs below them managed one, two and four.

### Now open the 16

Two of them are Brekalo and Spicer. Two of them are Orlando City's.

Two more came from the penalty spot, both in matches against Inter Miami. Fafà Picault took the second of those, in the 89th minute on October 17th.

Which leaves 12 goals scored by Atlanta United players from open play, across 11 matches. 1.09 a match.

The 20 matches before contain no own goals and no penalties at all. All 23 were Atlanta players, in open play. 1.15 a match.

The open-play rate went down.

Not by much. This is a goal count across 11 matches, not a model, and the gap is six hundredths of a goal a match. But it did not go up, and up is the whole claim. What improved in that number is two Orlando defenders and two kicks from 12 yards.

### Nothing else moved either

Across the same 11 matches Atlanta conceded 1.73 a match. Across the 20 before, 1.75. That is noise.

Miguel Almirón has three goals in the stretch and Giuliano Galoppo two. Almirón and Alexey Miranchuk are level on six for the season, the club's joint leading scorers. Tomás Jacob scored Saturday's opener, his fourth of the season per the Associated Press, and then Chicago Fire 3, Atlanta United 2, at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

Galoppo, speaking through a translator in a Field Level Media preview on October 13th, said the part nobody wants to hear in October: "We've been together for a month now at most so it's still new players who are learning to play together."

A month at most. In October.

### What is left

Atlanta United have 30 points from 31 matches — 8 wins, 6 draws, 17 defeats, goal difference minus 15 — and sit 14th of 15 in the Eastern Conference. The standings feed hangs no note on their row at all. No qualification, no elimination, nothing.

Their ceiling is 39 points and Red Bull New York already have 39, so level is the best outcome available before tiebreaks, which I walked through on Sunday.

Three matches left: Wednesday the 28th away at New York City FC, Toronto FC at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Sunday November 1st — the last home match of the regular season — and Red Bull New York away on Saturday November 7th.

In a league with relegation, the bottom of the table in late October is the most-watched part of it, because somebody down there is playing for their existence. Nothing is waiting at the bottom of this one.

Three days ago I asked whether a side that out-shoots people and loses this often is unlucky or badly built. That was the question.

The answer is 12 open-play goals in 11 matches. The one number this season that looked like luck turned out to belong to Orlando City.