In their fourth Preseason friendly and third Carolina Challenge Cup game, Atlanta United take on the Charleston Battery!

Where to watch/listen

Time: 7:30 PM Eastern Time

Watch: Atlanta United Official Website

Radio: 92.9 The Game with Jason Longshore and Mike Conti

Weather

Previous Results

Atlanta United:

D 1-1 vs. Minnesota United

Charleston Battery:

L 2-1 vs. Columbus Crew

Predicted Lineup

Tata Martino said this week that he was going to play the reserves this week. I think Tata is going to play a 4-3-3 formation despite playing the reserves as the formation worked very well and the 4-2-3-1 and 3-5-2 formations didn’t work well.

The only non-reserves I have playing are the three injured starters (Escobar, Villalba, and Parkhurst) who haven’t played much, Escobar and Villalba have played 25 minutes and Parkhurst hasn’t played, as they need to get their feet wet and experience some real playing time before playing a regular season game.I also have Hildebrant starting over Kann as I’d like to see Hildebrant start. I believe both are competing for the second GK spot so I think since Kann played more last year, Tata will want to see Hildebrant in a game situation more in order to judge him. I have Kratz in there as well instead of Gressel, who could play attacking midfielder, because he’s played less than Julian.

Prediction

The draw was certainly not a great result as Atlanta registered tons of shots and played great but it was still a good showing from Atlanta. Barco played extremely well, Guzan and the defense played well, and the players seemed to have a lot of energy. The problem was Atlanta just couldn’t finish. They had plenty of corners, shots, and opportunities to score but couldn’t put the ball in the net before the 85th minute. Atlanta needs to finish their chances to win but also need to eliminate silly turnovers that seem to keep happening.

Charleston is a pretty good team, despite playing in the USL, and have shown their ability to hang with MLS teams and even beat them.Atlanta loaned a lot of players to them last year and Charleston had to rebuild this summer and one of their new additions, Ian Svantesson, has shown his ability to score and I believe he could pose some problems for the reserves.

If Tata keeps his promise of playing the reserves, I think this will be a hard game that ends in a draw.

Atlanta 1-1 Charleston

ALL GAME PHOTOS COURTESY OF ATLUTD.COM UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED

Share this: Twitter

Facebook

Reddit

