Brad Guzan was a very busy man at Chase Stadium as Inter Miami CF and Atlanta United kicked off Round One of the Audi 2024 MLS Cup Playoffs last Friday, making eight saves as the Herons’ star-studded attack peppered his goal with big chances.
A man-of-the-match performance kept his Five Stripes in close contention for a shock upset until the very end, with even Lionel Messi himself expressing baffled wonder at some of the reflexes on display.
As Justin Honeker noted on his Talkin’ Soccer Substack, Guzan posted 3.07 Expected Goals on Target (xGoT) against, a metric that rates on-target shots based on a combination of their underlying chance quality and the quality of their execution; in very simplified terms, it means he turned what should’ve been a 5-1 rout into a tense nailbiter that eventually ended 2-1 in Miami’s favor.
Those eight stops ran his total to 22 saves across ATL’s three high-stakes matches in six days, extending a clutch run of form dating back to the Leagues Cup break, in which he’s been one of MLS’s very best goalkeepers in both statistical and eye-test terms.
“Just one of the guys”
Pretty damn good for the oldest player on the pitch, a guy who turned 40 last month – not that he, of all people, is counting.
“Listen,” Guzan said with a wry smile in a one-on-one conversation with MLSsoccer.com on Wednesday, “you don’t look at yourself with a number, with an age. It’s more about, do you have that desire? Do you have the ability to carry on? And when you have that, you’re just one of the guys, and you’re just one of the guys that happens to have a lot of experience.
“I don’t feel 40. I feel as if I’m 25 and I’m one of the guys, and I feel that I can just continue to carry on and compete.”
For much the same reasons, he’s not particularly thrilled by the widespread awe his heroics inspired, for the simple fact that it couldn’t stave off defeat for Atlanta, who now must beat IMCF in Game 2 of the series to extend their season at least one more match, with a bumper crowd north of 70,000 expected at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Saturday night (7 pm ET | MLS Season Pass).
“I was able to make a few saves. But the life of a goalkeeper is not about…
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