Level Set 3, Atlanta United FC: 2025 & History, Ahoy, MLS's Drunken Sailors

The answer to the subtitle: enjoy the show.

What follows is a brief history of Atlanta United FC, plus more brief notes on whatever long-term tendencies they have. Their 2025 season gets weighed on both sides of that and the whole thing ends with where I see things with them in this very specific moment in time - i.e., before First Kick 2026. You should count on things happening between here and there.

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?

Getting Reacquainted with Atlanta United FC, the Drunken Sailors of MLS

Pick his pockets! Pick his pockets!

Thumbnail History
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

Getting Reacquainted with Atlanta United FC, MLS's Super-Fun Party Guy

Act II, when things always look their worst.

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

Thumbnail History

Tempted as I am to say that Atlanta United FC started a tradition of expansion teams coming into MLS swinging, that strictly applies to them and Los Angeles FC (with honorable mention to New York City FC because they didn’t actually lift a trophy until their 7th season). Atlanta announced their intentions in its very first season (2017, btw), finishing fourth overall and with the second best goal differential (+30) behind an historically (and freakishly) great Toronto FC team. They followed that opening triumph by finishing even higher in their second season (second overall, this time behind a Red Bull New York team winning its third Supporters’ Shield) and winning MLS Cup at…well, an unfortunate stroll because the team they bested was, again, my Portland Timbers (to any Timbers fans reading this, it only seems like Portland has lost MLS Cup to every team in MLS, but it was just NYCFC and Atlanta). That ended Act I in Atlanta’s history. They kicked off Act II in 2019 by finishing third overall and winning the U.S. Open…back when such things mattered. Then, Act II being what it is, tragedy (and a global pandemic) struck in 2020 and the breezes that forever blew at their back turned to blow in their faces. They ended the dread COVID season in 23rd place overall, out of the playoff picture despite a generous expansion of its outer boundaries. Atlanta’s fortunes have been mixed since then – e.g., two top 10 finishes (2021 and 2023) on either side of yet another 23rd place finish in 2022. In an expansion of theatric convention, Atlanta has stretched the third act of its early history over three seasons. The question is whether continues as tragedy or comedy.

Best Season(s)

Their Cup-winning 2018 season provides the obvious answer, what with Josef Martinez, Miguel Almiron and…[supporting cast] terrorizing all of MLS in transition, but I’m going to Atlanta’s 2018 season, when they finished third and won that Open Cup. Why? I mean, two trophies in three seasons. Think of what the future felt like to their fans…

…but, obviously, their best season was 2018. Lifting the Cup in front of your fans is a beautiful thing.

Atlanta United FC 0-1 FC Cincinnati: Frankie Learns to Ride a Bike

Frankie Amaya, just a couple weeks ago...

With the second yellow/sending off of Atlanta United FC’s Jake Mulraney, a game that started as a salvage operation for FC Cincinnati evolved into something else. And I’m not even going to attempt to describe what that is because a dog-pile of weirdness surrounds FC Cincy’s 1-0 win over Atlanta this morning. Where to begin…

If you’re a parent, especially of a very young kid, you’ve had that moment where you can’t talk your kid into something you know they’re gonna love – think, say, riding a bike. To carry the analogy one step further, think of Mulraney’s sending off as training wheels. To set the scene: there you are, your kid is propped up on a bike that’s basically arranged to not fall down. All your son or daughter needs to do is pedal.

The question that lingers about this game for me was the extent to which Cincinnati’s still-brand-new head coach, Jaap Stam, encouraged his charges to starting pushing the pedals. Prior to Mulraney’s secondyellow, Cincinnati clearly lined up and played with avoiding a loss as the highest priority…which made sense after the searing blow-out against Columbus Crew SC a few days back. It’s after the red card where the questions came in. I didn’t expect them to fly forward the second Victor Rivas (the ref) flashed the red – as made plain today, Cincinnati has only vague theories about how to get to goal at this point – but as, it grew increasingly obvious that Atlanta shares the same weakness, I expected a little more urgency out of the Orange and Blue.

The one player to consistently provide it was Joe Gyau, who figured out early, and then again later, that he could play around whoever Atlanta played at left back. In fact, the duel between Gyau and Atlanta’s Edgar Castillo (subbed on to replace the absent Mulraney) provided the only fireworks worth watching in what otherwise played out as one dull, aimless fucking game. Cincy bunkered from the start, but the whole thing devolved into wayward crosses over dueling sets of low-blocks and general flailing.

In an attempt to conjure up a frame for the game, Taylor Twellman and Jon Champion floated the question of how large/long this win will linger in Cincinnati fans’ shared history. Speaking solely for myself, I’ll strive mightily to forget it after this post goes up. I don’t intend that to take anything away from the man of the hour, Frankie Amaya, who scored an absolutely cracking first professional goal; that the team made it stay up (assist by Atlanta) will leave him with a memory he’ll carry around for life. I’m not even going to fart around with my usual theories of replicability (i.e., did Cincy find a reliable route to goal) on the grounds that, when a player hits the ball that beautifully, it is good and right to take off your hat and say, “well done, son!”

Portland Timbers 0-2 Atlanta United FC: Narratives and Their Wrinkles

That is clarifying (apparently), but who sees it as such?

I loved this game for everything except the result. It was a fucking diamond, I tell you, in that it reveals different things when you hold it up to the light…

I didn’t like that the game ended with the Portland Timbers losing to Atlanta United FC 0-2 in Portland, obviously, even if I kinda saw it coming, or at least the outlines of it. To make a list of it, if you look at Portland’s last 10 opponents – @ MTL, v FCD, @ NYC, v COL, v ORL, @ SEA (ha!), v LAG, @ MIN, v VAN, v CHI – between talent and form, Atlanta presents as the most thoroughly leveled-up of the bunch. Sure, NYCFC looked as strong as Atlanta when the Timbers beat them in the Bronx, but the rest of all of those teams rolled into their game against Portland with some amount of baggage and pain, and that’s the line I’m drawing in this post: in Atlanta, Portland finally met a team with a similar kind/amount of talent and momentum and, the shocking evenness of the evening notwithstanding, it didn’t go great for the Timbers. They lost at home and with…a solid percentage of what most people seem to regard as its best team on the field. The only question I have is what percentage of Timbers fans found this result disappointing and what percentage see it as clarifying.

I’m borne for the latter camp (Team Clarifying!), even as it cuts against the record the Timbers compiled over their last 10 games; trust me, 20 points from 30 is fucking rare in this league, but that’s been Portland’s level. (Immediately relevant thereto, Atlanta has managed 19 points in its last 10 games, MLS regular season only, as in, not this game, or what the Mexican press thought of it.) At the same time, Atlanta has played well – sometimes very well - against MLS’s better teams – e.g., your NYCFCs, your LAFCs, your Galaxys (a fallen family, but still). Portland, to their very real and enduring credit, has done the proverbial business since finding their feet toward the end of its long, opening road trip; whatever I think of each of the ten teams listed below, wins in those games didn’t just happen and Portland posted some memorable wins during that stretch – there, wins over Seattle and LA stand out – but that doesn’t change the blunt reality that this resurgent, surging Atlanta teams was a different animal.

Before digging into details, sure, it could have gone either way last night…and that applies even if I think Atlanta created the better chances overall. As much as it’s fair to point out that Julio Cascante made the inexplicable decision that lead to Atlanta’s second goal (not sarcasm!), that wasn’t every reason why the Timbers failed to draw, never mind win, last night’s game. (Also, and because I ignored it entirely below, here's Atlanta's first goal.) They were not centered, they did not feel…

Atlanta United FC 1-1 FC Cincinnati: Is It Still a Magic When You Can See the Strings?

If there's no body, it's just people standing around....

Full disclosure: I was fixing a flat on my bike during the first half of Atlanta United FC v. FC Cincinnati. For those wondering, no, it’s not a fixee.

Counter-point: if you pull up the MLS App’s summary for the eventual 1-1 draw and check the timeline, you will see very few dots on the thin grey line that corresponds with that time period. Don’t think I missed much, in other words (and, holy shit, do I need bifocals). Here is what I did see:

Two classic banks of four that looked solid, if not impenetrable. Heartening as it was to see that, my personal most heartening moment came with Mathieu Deplagne crossed the ball and Fanendo Adi nodded it home. A conspiracy of “rules” declared the goal offside (again, I would have allowed it*, this is how I roll), but that moment gives at least an answer to the question of whether Cincinnati can be competitive in 2019. Cincinnati did not create many chances overall (WARNING: the box score may cause depression; other side effects may include a burning sensation, mild psychosis, the runs and immediate death), but that move came during open play and, if you worry about the team surviving on set-pieces alone, seeing decent attacking play of any kind spells R-E-L-I-E-F.

Better still, Roland Lamah scored FC Cincy’s late, reasonably deserved equalizer in open play as well, and this is how one winds up with hot cockles (and helluva(n) assist by Kenny Saief!). Just to note it, Lamah looks better than I thought he would coming into the season. Also, the selected highlights on MLSSoccer.com come just one clip shy of showing every single one of Cincinnati’s chances in this game. Marinate on that for a minute.

(* To wrap up the offside thing, I had an interesting debate with a guy on twitter about this and, as conceded there, calling offside on a strict black-and-white system simplifies things for all concerned; and yet I would adjust the rule to read that, if a player is mostly on-side (say, 80% or more), the goal should count. The way I see it, players already have to adjust to the way any given referee calls a game, so what’s one more wrinkle? But I digress.)

MLS Tourist Journal, Calender Week 6: Preseason and Varieties of Excitement

This far and no further till the regular season. You know the drill...

The fresh signings keep rolling into Major League Soccer – some flashier, some smarter – and preseason has started for just about every team in the league. Shit’s gettin’ real, but I still wouldn’t mistake anything that happens today for future lived reality, yea, these are the Ponzi schemes of fandom (what?).

Only the preseason portions of the above applies to the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati – and I’m directing the late jab at the end toward FC Cincinnati – but, before getting to them, I wanted to start with a wide-lens snapshot of MLS.

Varieties of New Signings

“They're coming off a championship, so those are the things that motivated me to come. ... [The chance to move on to Europe] was a factor, too. You see players leaving [MLS] for Europe, so that played into my decision.”

So said Atlanta United FC’s Pity Martinez, but the broad idea of showing up/off in MLS as a stepping stone to fat European pay-days has gained real currency over the past couple seasons. And not all players are doing this the same way, so do read the fine print in any new arrival’s contract. For instance, it looks like Martinez signed “a long-term contract” with Atlanta, so, even if he (and even Atlanta’s FO) think he’ll be gone in a year or two, they’ll have some control when he leaves and will almost certainly get a kick-back out of it. The San Jose Earthquakes took a different approach in landing Argentine forward(? – thought he was a midfielder) Cristian Espinoza, and used new head coach Matias Almeyda as a sweetener. Espinoza’s signing is almost explicitly rehab, i.e., “[talented] young player that needs minutes moves to a team with playing time available.” The other club involved – Spain’s Villareal – tapped Almeyda to mentor Espinoza and, if things pan out, Villareal reaps the long-term benefits. That business of acting as a finishing school for bigger clubs around the world doesn’t sound like the best deal, but, on the grounds that weirder things have panned out, may as well see where it goes…

Several other eye-catching signings have come together over the past week…just real quick: rumor turned to reality when New York City FC landed their Romanian stud/Replacement David Villa, Alexandru Mitrita (they also added young American defender Keaton Parks, who called rich-people start-up NYCFC “a great club”…based on…?); sticking with defenders, the rich got richer when Atlanta added the well-pedigreed Florentin Pogba at centerback and the Los Angeles Galaxy correctly identified and filled a hole with the signing of Uruguayan centerback, Diego Polenta. Moving to the other side of the pitch, it’s good to see Real Salt Lake sign a forward, and here’s to wishing Liberian international Sam Johnson comes through for them, while further north and east, and promises to “eat people” notwithstanding, I think Toronto FC might have taken a flyer by signing injury-tinged American forward Terence Boyd.

MLS Tourist Journal, Calendar Week 4: The Freighted Meaning of U.S. v. Panama and Pity Martinez

Why do they call me Pity, you ask?

Yeah, yeah, I won’t get to the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati until the end. But a little something significant takes place tomorrow evening, tomorrow night for the east coast audience, and things will just flow better if I bury that. Won’t blame anyone who spot-reads these things, ever. Moving on.

Professional soccer players (as opposed the Kombine Kids) will kick a ball around for the first time in 2019 tomorrow night. It’ll be a competitive experience, even if it isn’t a competitive event. When the U.S. Men’s National Team plays formerly lowly Panama tomorrow night – formerly, because who made the 2018 World Cup? – I can’t say how many eyes will be on them, but I expect fairly intense interest among the eyeballs they do draw. Here’s why:

“Hire the wrong coaches? Yes. Cut the wrong players? Yes. Pick the wrong teams? Yes. Fail to develop or integrate a half-decade's worth of young talent? Yes. Show gaps in the regional armor with losses to teams we should dominate like Guatemala, Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago? Yes. Miss the Olympics twice? Yes. Miss the World Cup?”

That commentary, lifted from Matt Doyle’s 48-hour preview, covers just about every ingredient that led to the bad taste that’s lingered in your mouth since the U.S. Men last played. I can’t even say when the U.S. played last for the same reason you don’t go to a substitute teacher for parent-teacher conferences. Everyone understood that Dave Sarachan wouldn’t be guiding the team to 2022, so it made sense to wait until the guy who will stepped up. And, hello, Gregg Berhalter!

I read the usual handful of sources (so, so lazy) to get myself prepared for tomorrow’s game, both mentally and emotionally, but, with this being Berhalter’s first game out, no one really knows what to expect. Jurgen Klinsmann (one of my obsessions) changed my understanding of U.S. Soccer, in that he expanded the range of what is possible. In so many words, I’d grown up on steady progress, I’d internalized the idea that the team would improve, maybe without much in the way of style or excitement, and certainly with a couple set-backs, but steadily. Jurgen undermined all that in such an insidious way that one has to wonder whether he wasn’t some kind of Manchurian candidate. I remember watching Klinsmann’s first game in charge. It wasn’t pretty, but that also didn’t seem important given that Klinsmann would slowly make the U.S. his team…I don’t know that that ever happened. I’m not sure anyone knows whether that happened…