The reasons why Atlanta United went from being a title contender to failing in one season

Atlanta United was a brilliant team. Their aggressiveness and stamina mixed with the talent of young Latin American players such as Miguel Almiron, Josef Martinez and, why not, Ezequiel Barco was perfect. But after being the 2018 MLS Cup champions and 2019 US Open Cup winners they fall apart.

The main problem here are the changes. When you became such an impressive team is really hard to keep all your players. Greg Garza, Almiron, Michael Parkhurst, Darlington Nagbe, Leandro Gonzalez Pirez, Julian Gressel, Tito Villalba, Justin Meram. All of them are gone. That’s eight of the 14 players that took the field in the match against Timbers.

There are special cases like Miguel Almiron who left to the Premier League but there are others like Gonzalez Pires who went to Miami. The club should have made a stronger effort to retain these kind of players. Worst of all, the stars that the team kept, got injured. Josef Martinez has missed most of this season to a torn ACL.

The team record is a disaster. In 20 games, they have 5 wines, 4 draws and 11 losses, that makes a total of only 19 points. If they lose one more game, thew could end at the bottom of the table. The fans are going to get really upset if that happened and they pass from being the Champions, to the last ones.