The Houston Dynamo and Atlanta United will face off for the first time ever on Saturday evening (6:00 p.m. CT | KUBE 57) in front of a sold-out Bobby Dodd Stadium. It’s a quick turnaround for a Dynamo team that lost 2-0 at Philadelphia on Wednesday and are looking to flip the page, still looking for their first point on the road.
“We’ve got to play the way the Dynamo plays,” said head coach Wilmer Cabrera. “We have to be mentally strong, we have to be focused and we have to be decisive with every ball throughout the 90 minutes. If we do that, we are going to be able to match up and we are going to be able to get a good result.”
Houston comes into this match as the second place team in the West, thanks in large part to playing seven of their first 10 matches at home. Atlanta began the season the opposite way, seven of their first 10 on the road, and are hoping a home win can pull them out of ninth place in the East.
The spotlight in this game will immediately be on two of the top five offenses in Major League Soccer. The Dynamo forwards, responsible for 20 of the team’s 21 goals this season, have struggled to score on the road but don’t expect Atlanta United head coach Tata Martino to underestimate them.
“They are a team that runs a lot,” said Martino in his weekly presser, via The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “You can see that they labor a lot in attack. You can see they are determined team in attack, especially the forward. We will have to see if that’s the case against us.”
Martino’s team got plenty of praise early in the year after the expansion club generated twelve goals in their first three matches. In the absence of the team’s top scorer Josef Martinez, Tito Villalba, Kenwyne Jones, Julian Gressel and Carlos Carmona have taken care of the attack with the assists of midfielder Miguel Almiron.
“We have seen them play,” said defender Adolfo Machado. “They are very dynamic, they possess well, they have important players, but the Houston Dynamo have a good dynamic as well, we have important players that are in a good rhythm. We hope that, God willing, on Saturday we can get the win.”
On a special note, midfielder Ricardo Clark could earn his 300th MLS start in his hometown Atlanta. The longtime Dynamo will surely be hoping his first trip home as a professional will result in a win.
