Atlanta United: Darlington Nagbe the provider for the panache

Darlington Nagbe is learning a new position at Atlanta United: the deep-lying playmaker. And he is adapting to it wonderfully. He is the provider for the Five Stripes’ panache; he allows the brilliance to be grounded in the regular.

Atlanta United are a wonderful team to watch. Ever since their explosion onto the MLS scene, they have been. The raucous atmosphere outside the white lines is only matched by the blistering, ferocious manner in which they play between them. Pace, power, precision, attacking intent. They are a team full of entertainers.

But sport, while in part an entertainment business, is about more than just being able to make the crowd cheer. It is not WWE. There is a greater cause to fight for, one of winning, not wooing. And for Atlanta, they ultimately fell short of that goal last year.

The panache was breathtaking. The individual brilliance of Miguel Almiron. The steely-eyed, ruthlessness of Josef Martinez. The athleticism of Julian Gressel and guile of Hector Villalba. It was a remarkably entertaining team to watch, especially as a neutral. But there was something missing.

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‘That’s where we wanted to deploy him with our team, and as you’ve seen after the first few games, he’s starting to get into a rhythm where he gets on the ball and he’s really that connector, an [Andres] Iniesta type, a [Sergio] Busquets type.’

That is Atlanta Technical Director Carlos Bocanegra on the latest addition to the Atlanta midfield, Darlington Nagbe. The previously presumed winger has been shifted in a deeper, more central role after the offseason trade, with Tata Martina clearly highlighting the key shortcoming of last year’s team: Grounding their brilliance in regularity.

While Nagbe used to be a mercurial, varied winger who never quite produced what was hoped of him, as this brilliant piece by Sam Stejskal details, what he does bring, in a deeper role, is a consistency and reliability to the team’s passing. His distribution has this wonderful blend of being both forward-thinking and possession-orientated.

There are many players who have the ability to keep possession ticking over, dictating the tempo from deep midfield, and ensuring that the team’s passing is consistent, without ever furthering the position of the team up the pitch into more advanced areas; equally, there are many players who have the vision, awareness, anticipation and then technical skill to execute to advance the team, playing passes into the final third to progress attacking moves. But there are very few that do both. There are very few that can not only play the more challenging, instigating, early-move passes that are utterly necessary from midfield, but do so with a dependable regularity that does not result in a high frequency of turnovers. Nagbe, in this new role, does both.

It is what makes so invaluable to this Atlanta team. He is not asked to create and score goals at the cutting-edge of the game. With the likes of Almiron, Martinez, Villalba and now Ezequiel Barco added to the mix, he is not needed to. But he is asked to build the foundation for those players to provide the panache. And he has done so brilliantly.

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Now, not only are Atlanta entertaining like last year, but they have a scary consistency to their play that may just give them that extra edge. They are the best team in MLS currently. They were pretty close last year, but Nagbe has put them over the top. And it’s all because he brings consistency and regularity to their brilliance.

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