Pumas goes to Atlante on Friday carrying four straight matches without a win, a run that has left Santiago Solari’s team stuck on 13 points and outside the virtual qualification zone. What once looked like a steady push has become a narrow race to stop dropping ground before the table pulls away.
That is why Atlante Vs Pumas is drawing attention now. Pumas is 12th, two points behind Xolos de Tijuana in eighth place, so the margin for error has shrunk to almost nothing. The last time Pumas won was in jornada 7 on 10 de septiembre, when it beat León at home, and since then the team has gone through losses to Chivas by 3-0 and Atlético de San Luis by 2-3, plus draws with Atlas at 1-1 and Cruz Azul at 3-3.
Solari has not hidden what is driving the slide. He said the team has had a penalty or a red card in every match, a mistake that changes the plan and leaves them chasing the game, and he added that the side must do much more because it is not enough to win. He also said the group is working hard and beginning to understand the idea of play it wants to use, which is the reason the frustration feels so sharp: the football is supposed to be coming together even as the results keep slipping away.
The numbers around Atlante do not offer much comfort either. Miguel Herrera’s team has only one win, three draws and one loss in its five home matches, so Pumas should see a path to points, but it must take it without the mistakes that have cost it for a month. Atlante also needs results, which gives Friday’s match a simple edge: the side that handles pressure better will probably leave with the outcome it needs.
Pumas cannot afford to treat this as a one-off test. After Atlante, it still has Santos, Tigres, Puebla, América and Monterrey ahead, a stretch that makes every dropped point now harder to recover later. If Solari’s team wants to stay in the fight for the Liguilla, Friday is not just another stop on the schedule; it is the kind of match it has to turn before the calendar turns against it.
