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| 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
* 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
Long-Term Tendencies
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. In fewer words, Atlanta has been bad for a few.
How 2024 Measured Up
The fact they kicked MLS’s Specialest Special Boys, Inter Miami CF, out of the playoffs put a shine on what had been a pretty fucking rusty season for Atlanta. Given their runs of wins and losses through the 2024 regular season, the fact they qualified for even a wild card counts as a miracle that either the Vatican or the Justice Department should look into. Over the two playoff games I watched, my foremost thought was “Christ, is anyone gonna help Saba Lobjanidze?” (Atlanta's leading scorer on these numbers) and that sums up the attacking side of Atlanta’s 2024; Saba was close to alone after Gorgios Giakoumakis checked out mid-season. In brighter news, with Derrick Williams and Stian Gregersen holding down the back and Tristan Muyumba putting out fires in front of them (at least until he couldn’t), the defense tightened up for the first time since 2021. That shift alone helped a punchless attack outlast, first, all of the Eastern Conference’s worse teams and then Montreal, then Miami….also, ha, ha, ha, fuck those guys.
Questions for Their 2025 Season
Things get a little deceptive here because Atlanta, who have never stopped spending like sailors on shore-leave, got going on their next rebuild in the middle of 2024. New DP Russian midfielder, Aleksey Miranchuk, arrived at the end of July, but didn’t make much of a difference in his limited minutes. Atlanta got just north of a handful of goals out of Jamal Thiare (signed in 2023) and Daniel Rios (loaned from Charlotte FC in March 2024, kicked to the curb since), so one has to think they’ll upgrade at forward either before the season or in the middle of it. Apart from bringing the delightful Ronny Delia back to MLS (thanks!), Atlanta's biggest moves involving players has, so far, topped out at throwing…not much to separate Polish midfielder Mateusz Klich from DC United is the only move (right?) that means anything to me and the rest look like depth. I just caught a rumor about them trying to get Almiron back from Newcastle, which was fun, but what they do to get their central midfield nailed down – and, fwiw, I’m guessing Klich buys them a season, maybe two – and who comes in at the striker/forward position feel like the biggest questions for Atlanta in 2025. Getting things right at forward reads like the big one for me.
MLS Cup: 2018
MLS Playoffs Semifinals: 2019
MLS Playoffs/Quarterfinals: 2024
CCL Quarterfinals: 2019, 2020, 2021
U.S. Open Cup: 2019
Long-Term Tendencies
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. In fewer words, Atlanta has been bad for a few.
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| Start here. It will be fruitful. |
The fact they kicked MLS’s Specialest Special Boys, Inter Miami CF, out of the playoffs put a shine on what had been a pretty fucking rusty season for Atlanta. Given their runs of wins and losses through the 2024 regular season, the fact they qualified for even a wild card counts as a miracle that either the Vatican or the Justice Department should look into. Over the two playoff games I watched, my foremost thought was “Christ, is anyone gonna help Saba Lobjanidze?” (Atlanta's leading scorer on these numbers) and that sums up the attacking side of Atlanta’s 2024; Saba was close to alone after Gorgios Giakoumakis checked out mid-season. In brighter news, with Derrick Williams and Stian Gregersen holding down the back and Tristan Muyumba putting out fires in front of them (at least until he couldn’t), the defense tightened up for the first time since 2021. That shift alone helped a punchless attack outlast, first, all of the Eastern Conference’s worse teams and then Montreal, then Miami….also, ha, ha, ha, fuck those guys.
Questions for Their 2025 Season
Things get a little deceptive here because Atlanta, who have never stopped spending like sailors on shore-leave, got going on their next rebuild in the middle of 2024. New DP Russian midfielder, Aleksey Miranchuk, arrived at the end of July, but didn’t make much of a difference in his limited minutes. Atlanta got just north of a handful of goals out of Jamal Thiare (signed in 2023) and Daniel Rios (loaned from Charlotte FC in March 2024, kicked to the curb since), so one has to think they’ll upgrade at forward either before the season or in the middle of it. Apart from bringing the delightful Ronny Delia back to MLS (thanks!), Atlanta's biggest moves involving players has, so far, topped out at throwing…not much to separate Polish midfielder Mateusz Klich from DC United is the only move (right?) that means anything to me and the rest look like depth. I just caught a rumor about them trying to get Almiron back from Newcastle, which was fun, but what they do to get their central midfield nailed down – and, fwiw, I’m guessing Klich buys them a season, maybe two – and who comes in at the striker/forward position feel like the biggest questions for Atlanta in 2025. Getting things right at forward reads like the big one for me.
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