Hello again. We’re back with yet another Atlanta United post-match opinion column. This won’t be the usually clickbaity format where I put out a boring listicle with some predictable narratives about the 90 minute match that was just played. Frankly, I cannot be asked to do that right now. I just don’t have it in me to talk about how the attack showed signs of promise but just can’t put it together or how the team just doesn’t look cohesive six months into the season. I’ve done it over and over again and I’m sick of it.
Writing these columns used to be fun after a win and cathartic after a tough loss. But now, the only feeling I feel for these columns, and frankly for this club as a whole right now, is apathy. It’s been a growing feeling for over two years and right now it feels like it’s reached the apex. It’s just impossible for me to conjure up the energy or emotion to formulate coherent thoughts when every single match this season has been the same thing over and over. Lack of ideas in the final third, mixed with spells of lethargic defending, sprinkled with a few glimpses of individual magic that barely threaten to produce a goal.
As sad as it is to say, I’m here because I have to be and not because I want to be. That may seem funny to say on a random soccer blog, but I’m sure many fans feel that way about this team as well. I still love this club and want nothing more for it to make me feel emotions again. But right now, it just seems pretty hopeless. The team is more concerned about spinning some gossip in the media than making moves to try and turn the season around or at least give the squad a boost of some sort. It’s just constant tactical shifts while moving the same players around the field while producing the same monotonous play.
Maybe they’ll shock us all and flip some imaginary switch after the All-Star Game and make a run towards the playoffs. Maybe that’s where the lack of urgency comes from is that artificial sense of hope that the parity of “only being four points away” from the playoff line offers. If some of you still hold on to that hope throughout the weeks to get you motivated to watch the next match, all the power to you. I just can’t muster that energy right now.
I apologize for the depressing tone of this column. But that’s just how I feel right now. I hope something magical happens and they make me look like an idiot. I’d rather look like an idiot and enjoy watching Atlanta United games again than be proven right and be miserable.
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