Atlanta United is at a crossroads, the Five Stripes are in the middle of yet another poor season and even though the team has been decimated by injuries, one of the league’s most expensive teams are yet again out of the playoff line. The demoralizing display against Austin FC a 3-0 defeat left the announced crowd of over 67,000 bewildered as to what is going on.
After the match the team stayed in the dressing room for over an hour having a heart to heart regarding the team’s performance. When players spoke to the media it was club icon Josef Martínez once again providing huge quotes, first about the team’s poor first half of the season and pointing the finger at the front office for signing players for “business reasons” over winning.
What do these comments mean in the short term for a team that has many of the league’s biggest incoming transfers, who knows, but with a 5-8-5 record the season is not over, but very much in trouble.
Fans point finger at one man… Carlos Bocanegra
After the match on the Dirty South Soccer podcast, the Atlanta United supporter’s frustration had reached a fever pitch with many fans calling the loss to Austin FC the “worst performance at Mercedes-Benz Stadium”. Almost universally the fans did not attack any players, for the exception of mistake prone Alan Franco, or head coach Gonzalo Pineda, who is getting a pass from fans for the ridiculous number of injuries he has had to deal with this season. It’s Carlos Bocanegra who is feeling the heat.
A lot of Carlos Bocanegra’s flak comes from a damning Athletic article that brought to light many issues within the team, from Bocanegra’s poor relationship with MLS Cup winning coach Tata Martino to the inexplicable departures of players such as Héctor Villalba, Julian Gressel, and Tata’s choice Darlington Nagbe.
Also coming to light was the issues surrounding the eventual incoming transfer of Esequiel Barco, where Martino was clear he did not want Barco to come to the club but instead use the funds on other areas of the team. Martino was overruled and Barco was bought in and spent four seasons at the club playing his best year in 2021 and then being loaned out to River Plate where he has become an on again off again starter plagued with the same issues he had at Atlanta United regarding consistency.
According to reports in Argentina, River can purchase Barco for $14 million if the club activates the buy option, it is doubtful that will happen, and if true, it would mean Atlanta United would have lost $1 million on Barco, who has seen his market value plummet.
The fans have growing concerns over the future of the club as the “heart and soul” of the Martino era seems to have vanished and Atlanta United has the packaging of the team it set out to be in the early days of their MLS history, but today are a shell of themselves.
So, what went wrong at Atlanta United?
Too much too soon, Atlanta United hit the ground running, not only did they become the league leaders in attendance in MLS, but they are also still one of the highest attended teams in the world. The club won MLS Cup and US Open Cup in two seasons and have bought and sold many of the highest transfers in the league’s history.
The club seemed to be checking all the boxes that was until 2020 when Gabriel Heinze was named the club’s third coach. Heinze was a complete disaster, on the field he pushed the team hard in training and was the first manager to truly consider phasing out Josef Martínez in an effort to build a team over the reliance on one individual. The end result are two versions of the same story, on the Atlanta side, Heinze was an out-of-control narcissistic coach who needed to go, reports from Heinze’s camp in Argentina are more inclined to say that the club abandoned the project over issues of marketing and hear say.
Nonetheless what happened with Heinze falls on the Atlanta United brass, it was public knowledge that Heinze was very confrontational with the media and was not open to do anything outside of coaching his team. It left the question, what exactly did Darren Eales and Bocanegra research or get from interviews with the Argentine?
For Atlanta United it meant giving a team built for Gabriel Heinze to Gonzalo Pineda who got the most out of the Five Stripes as they reached the playoffs only to be ousted by eventual champions NYCFC in the first round.
Enter 2022 and once again Atlanta United make a big splash signing with Thiago Almada, who is a major upgrade over Barco in regard to soccer IQ and Almada came to MLS already having been called in with the senior Argentine national team. It is also important to note that since his MLS arrival Almada was never called back to the Argentine national team.
With as many as 11 key injuries during the season Atlanta United has chugged along and for the first time the club seems to be without any real direction. It could be time for Atlanta United to hold the fort on other aspects, youth development, selling and buying players, and focus on the true job at hand… winning games and titles in MLS.
While this season is more of a rebuilding year, Atlanta United have very little room in the current transfer market to do much else with the roster. Come next season the club will have to make huge decisions, the biggest what to do with Josef Martínez, who is not providing anything close to the numbers he had under Martino, although he is the biggest spokesperson of trying to “save” the club.
For the Atlanta United fans who got spoiled early, the club is still salvageable if it can return to its roots, the problem is those roots are extremely high standards in the world of MLS and one that could take Atlanta United a long time to reach again.
