Pick his pockets! Pick his pockets! |
As noted in yesterday’s post on Los Angeles FC, Atlanta United FC started 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 coming second almost certainly got lost in the dopamine when they won MLS Cup 2018 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 apparently-fovever 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 23-season 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. Atlanta’s Act I seemed destined to on forever, but, as every play does, the action moved on to Act II, 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 would miss 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 (I think) 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, but 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 the 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.
Total Joy Points: 10