Atlanta-Cruz Azul throughts (aka It's raining blue)

Fun night out at the RE/MAX tonight. As I try to dry out, here's a few random thoughts:

• Fun atmosphere at the game tonight. The Cruz Azul fans were great, and there were tons of them. It's always nice to get weird looks when you're wearing the home team's colors. When we countered their chants of "Azul" with chants of "Rojo", good times ensued.
  
• With their season kicking off next week, I think Cruz Azul will be working on defending set pieces in training over the next few days. They struggled all night on them. McManus scored off a corner, but it was called back. Lancaster scored on another one with a nice header, and there were many other dangerous chances. It was definitely on set pieces that Atlanta looked most dangerous.
  
• That said, the Cruz Azul counterattack is high quality. They looked dangerous a few times, and then won in the second half on a great break after an Atlanta corner. El Matador struck again, as the attacker was able to penetrate deep into the Atlanta defensive third before getting an uncontested cross off.
  
• Macoumba Kandji was the most dangerous player on the field in the first half. Can we get Robert Stack and Unsolved Mysteries on the case so he can play in the real games?
  
• I was glad to see the switch to a 3-5-2 late, but I'd like to see it tried with 2 attacking center mids instead of 2 defensive ones. Rios and Rivillo combining with the 2 forwards would be interesting to see. All too often, when the team switches to 3 in the back, they still bypass the midfield in favor of the long ball. It'd be nice to use the numbers advantage in midfield.
  
• It was nice to watch the game without the music during the run of play. The PA announcer also did a good job overall with the bilingual announcements. I'd like to see that continued. If you're going to cater to the Hispanic market by bringing in a team of Cruz Azul's stature, give those fans the same game day experience when the come back to USL games. Anyone serious about soccer in America at this point knows that the game is spoken in 2 languages.
  
• I wish the fans had been thanked more for staying out in the downpour. Very few people left when the storm started, which made it kind of a shame when everyone bolted for the locker room at the final whistle. The team should clap to the fans after everything is said and done, I've always thought that was an extremely classy thing to do after games.
  
• Other than missing Borgetti and Torrado, this was pretty much the first team for Cruz Azul. Even with the semi-ugly second half, a 2-1 loss against a team of this caliber is a fine performance. Let's hope that this will prime them for the USL stretch run.
  

There may be more later, but I'd love to hear from anyone else who took a bath at the RE/MAX tonight. Hit up the comments, folks.