 |
| The answer to the subtitle: enjoy the show. |
The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...
Thumbnail History
As much as any team in league history, Atlanta United FC kicked off the tradition of expansion teams coming into MLS swinging. They arrived in the 2017 season like fun drunks livening up a wedding, finishing fourth overall and with the second-best goal differential (+30) behind an historically (and freakishly) good Toronto FC team. Atlanta finished even higher in 2018 – if, again, second-best after a Red Bull New York team winning its third Supporters’ Shield – but that promptly left their minds when they won their first MLS Cup at…well, an unfortunate stroll over my Portland Timbers. The secret to pulling that off followed from near-perfect roster construction. It started with (more or less) flipping off that season’s Expansion Draft, finding two future stars in the 2017 Superdraft – Julian Gressel was the stand-out (Miles Robinson bloomed later) – and then going nuts with trades and transfers. Atlanta’s FO built a spine out of ol’ reliables from all over MLS – e.g., Michael Parkhurst, Jeff Larentowicz, and their once-forever goalkeeper, Brad Guzan - but they had to scour the international markets for their crown jewels, Josef Martinez and Miguel Almiron. One gave them lightning-like verticality – Almiron, who seemed to bend time when he got on the run – while the other finally ended Roy Lassiter’s reign of terror atop the single-season record for goals scored. For two fun-filled seasons – 2018 and 2019 - defenses struggled to keep Martinez from scoring goals and all came perilously close to allowing him a goal per game. Just when Atlanta’s Act I seemed destined to go on forever, it moved on to Act II (as every play does), aka, the one where the hero(es) look lost and everything looks impossible and the doom kicks in. The trouble started when Martinez tore his ACL in the first game of 2020 – he missed the entire season – and then came COVID, chaos (aka, Gabriel Heinze) and, when it all ended, a 23rd-place overall finish in the final standings. That’s not to say Atlanta didn’t move heaven, earth and bags of money to avoid that fate: when Almiron moved on to the EPL’s Newcastle, they gambled heavily on Ezequiel Barco and Pity Martinez, two young, (reportedly) high-upside talents from Argentina. They paid a $15 million transfer for Barco and somewhere around $10 million for Martinez; Barco played more games (81), but Martinez got more in less time (39), but he was only around for 2019-20, while Barco lasted from 2018-2020. Both players are more memorable as cautionary tales than for anything they did on the field. Coaching problems plagued the team as well, starting with apparent sociopath, Heinze, but, with respect to Gonzalo Pineda, they haven’t got it right since. Some entry-level farting around in the CONCACAF Champions’ League aside (see below*), things faded fast and, hard as they’ve tried, the color hasn’t flushed back into Atlanta’s cheeks since…or has it?
Kidding. It hasn’t. Not really.
You could have made a “strapping up” montage out of Atlanta’s signings going into 2025. On top of the much-hyped return Almiron, the spent big on forward Emmanuel Latte Lath; Atlanta’s front office made a heavy gamble that adding those two to another pricey addition (Alexey Miranchuk) plus 2024 hero, Saba Lobjanidze, would lift them back into the league’s elite. They capped the rebuild by hiring a coach who had already lifted an MLS Cup (and honored a bet to strip to his skivvies after) in Ronny Deila. They had all the pieces, in other words, which looked incredible on paper…only to see none of them fit together. Despite most of those star players getting real minutes (Lobjanidze had the fewest at 1,937), the wheels came off early and, impressive back-to-back midseason wins versus Cincinnati and Orlando aside, Atlanta spent the back half of 2025 throwing bodies (mostly DC United) between themselves and the Wooden Spoon. They won just two more games between those stirring May wins and the end of the season, a Leagues Cup win over Liga MX’s Atlas and a road win at Nashville. The millions Atlanta invested in scoring goals cashed out to barely over one goal per game (they scored 38 over the regular season) and the defense shipped goals on pace with the worst in the league (which, again, DC). In Atlanta’s defense, some key players that helped them defend to the right of average in 2024 – e.g., Stian Gregerson and Derrick Williams (also, Tristan Muyumba) – missed half of 2025. But that just means they didn't have a Plan B back there, damning in its own right
Long-Term Tendencies v Recent Trends
Hard as I try to draw out even marginal themes for this section, Atlanta doesn’t really have one. They benefitted from good to great defenses from the founding through 2021, but that went soft when they did. The attack was fire their first three seasons, but tanked to average thereafter. 2021 excepted – which might have been the best defensive year of their short history – something has been wrong or just off on one side of the field or the other. The poison seeped deep into the attacking side over the past two seasons, which, again, has to be read as a massive shock given how much Atlanta invested on that side of the field.
Players I Still Like/Additions So Far
Atlanta has added three players since the end of the 2025 season – homegrown midfielder Santiago Pita, goalkeeper Lucas Hoyos, and a defender named Tomas Jacob on a transfer from Club Necaxa – and I can’t do anything with them besides wait to see how they pan out. After Brooks Lennon, the three defenders they have so far let go played fewer than 2,000 minutes between them (with a large lion’s share to Ronald Hernandez) and, in what feels like a good call, that looks like clearing space for a defensive rebuild. We'll have to see how that pans out as well. Based on the (limited) information I have on hand, it appears Atlanta has opted to stand pat on the attacking players they have (though I’ve rumors about moving Latte Lath), which makes sense, if only on the theory they signed all those players to large/long-term contracts (I don't look these things up; that's for the relevant front office, local press, and the real obsessives on reddit). Based on all that, and barring further changes, that leaves Atlanta fans hoping that Deila, who was let go in October 2025, was a really shitty coach. Failing that, the only solution at this point feels like getting all those pricey players singing from the same sheet.
Historical Success (/Hysterical Failure)
Total Joy Points: 8
How They Earned Them (& How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
MLS Cup: 2018
MLS Playoffs Semifinals: 2019
MLS Playoffs/Quarterfinals: 2024
CCL Quarterfinals: 2019, 2020, 2021
U.S. Open Cup: 2019
No comments:
Post a Comment