The attacking style is the same. The loyal fan base is the same (if increasingly restless). The recent results, though, clearly are not.

Atlanta United begins its eighth season in MLS on Saturday, pushing the team one year further from its past glories when it sat atop the league and was its marquee club.

And, as such, it’s well past time to stop thinking about the club in that way. Its aspirations and intent remain high – owner Arthur Blank’s team has been in the top five in total salary for the past four years, according to Spotrac – but the performance on the field has not matched the investment from ownership or the team’s devoted supporters.

In 2019, Atlanta United followed the 2018 MLS Cup by winning the U.S. Open Cup (a national tournament that includes about 100 amateur and professional clubs) and Campeones Cup (a matchup of the defending MLS and Mexican league champions). Since then, Atlanta United has been fairly average, and that’s the accurate way to view the team, not as a trophy-capturing entity.

Since 2019, the Five Stripes have finished 12th, fifth, 11th and sixth in the Eastern Conference. There are myriad reasons to explain the drop-off – the departure of coach Tata Martino, president Darren Eales and star players such as Josef Martinez, injuries, mistakes on managers and high-price player acquisitions and the change in philosophy brought by new president Garth Lagerwey. But four seasons is a long time not to show much of anything. It’s not as though Atlanta United is the only club to ride ups and downs.

The team has not won an MLS playoff round or defeated an MLS team in the U.S. Open Cup in the past four seasons. Its most significant win probably was a home win over Columbus in a best-of-three series last year in the first round of the MLS playoffs. The Five Stripes followed that win by getting eliminated in the decisive third game by the eventual MLS Cup champions.

In January, technical director Carlos Bocanegra pointed to a top-four finish in the Eastern Conference as an objective. That’s a worthy goal – it ensures home-field advantage in the first round of the playoffs – but it’s not like we’re talking about splitting the atom, figuratively speaking. (For that matter, literally speaking, either.)

Of the 25 MLS teams besides Atlanta United that were in existence in 2020, 19 have finished in the top four of their conference at least once in the past four seasons. Archrival Orlando City accomplished it last year with a payroll that was a little more than half of Atlanta United’s, according to Spotrac.

That Atlanta United fielded a dominant team in its first three years isn’t really relevant anymore as a measure of what it can achieve as currently constructed. Of club executives (aside from Blank), decision makers, coaches and scouts with a hand on the product on the field, there’s only one person still remaining who contributed materially to any of the first three seasons, Bocanegra. (There’s also only one remaining player, goalkeeper Brad Guzan.) It’s virtually an entirely new organization.

When Bocanegra pointed to a top-four finish as a goal, it was part of an answer to a question about what supporters’ expectations should be.

...continued

©2024 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Visit at ajc.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.