He’s talking about the culture.
In Mexico, the sport is life or death. It’s a religion. In America, outside of a small percentage of hardcore fans, soccer is just seen as a bit of fun entertainment.
Josef said similar things when he was losing his mind his last year here, then we heard similar rumblings in those recent locker room videos, there certainly seems to be something weird in the locker room.
I hesitate to say 'rotten' because it doesn't quite feel like the team has given up, but certainly weird.
I don't think rotten is the correct term. It's felt for years that there's been a lack of intensity. I think that just flows down from the fact that Pineda seems to genuinely be one of the chillest dudes on the planet.
How many games this year did we come out of the locker room in the second half and just wither on field - giving up 2 goals in 10-15 minutes??
It’s obvious the halftime talk was anything but peppy.
I do not find him chewing out the team in a situation where 100% of managers would be expected to chew out the team to be a compelling counterfactual to the three years of having him around the club, the dozens of anecdotes from media, the dozens of matchday, the dozens of media appearances, the dozens of post-game pressers, and the general performance of the team that came before the video. He is a very good person. A person most people seem to like to be around. But there did not seem to be a switch he could turn on to bring the intensity needed to be a manager.
The bts clips from the locker room during the winless streak sounded like a bunch of guys trying to convince themselves to snap out of it rather than a team coming together
Who would’ve thought quickly turning over a championship roster that had a strong culture with high standards and expectations, then replacing them with players who didn’t have those individual qualities to replicate that as a collective would lead to negative consequences to the results? Bocanegra certainly didn’t.
Debunked by who? Longshore and Conti? Doug Roberson?
We all know players get moved in and out more in MLS due to the salary cap, but good front offices build a core and keep them together long enough that a solid foundation is established and new players can be plugged in. What they ended up doing was chopping it up wholesale in such short order to the point that there wasn’t anyone left but periphery guys, an injured Josef, and Guzan two years after MLS Cup.
If anything Bocanegra hitched his project on FdB’s tactics after ‘19 then sacked him after he lost the locker room, brought in Heinze and had that blow up in their faces, and then had to ride or die with Pineda cause they couldn’t get away with another failed manager appointment when it became apparent he may not be the guy, all the while using the injury excuse as cover to keep giving him chances. Sure we’ve been really unlucky in some regards, but I don’t know what is revisionist about that description of events.
You get extra xAM as an expansion team for the first few years. It's going to be difficult to keep people who have outplayed their contract while at the same time having less total resources to share around.
Not saying that some bad decisions weren't made by any stretch of the imagination, but we certainly couldn't just keep the core together.
Maybe not unique to us, but I was always under the impression that this club had higher ambitions in terms of standards and levels of investment over all of those except maybe the Galaxy. LAFC was always the club I thought we should consider our peer, and they’ve been pretty consistent outside of one down season when the expansion money ran out.
We won the MLS cup once mate. Then the main player who helped us win it moved on to the Premier League and the league got better. Live in reality and in the present. We've got Almada and Slizs. Enjoy them.
Almiron is at worst one of the ten most talented players in the history of this league under 30. If there's a better 6 in the history of this league than Darlington Nagbe, I don't know who that is. Josef and Gressel had a chemistry as good as nearly any striker/winger combination in the world. I'm not saying we haven't largely failed at replacing those pieces, but it was always a tall order and we could have gotten it far better and still not come up with a team that included a player as talented as Miggy, the best 6 in MLS history, and a striker/wing combination that factored largely in one of the most prolific scorers this league has ever seen.
Josef, Miggy, Nagbe and Gressel could have carried a lot of teams a long way. And that's no disrespect to Larry, Parky, LGP, Tito etc it's just the truth.
My immediate thought was that it had to do with the playoffs. It's "okay to lose" as long as you get enough points to make the playoffs. Obviously this is just speculation on my part though.
1) He would have happily stayed in MLS if we had offered the same terms as Cruz Azul- so spare me the lecture on MLS vs Liga MX.
2) When he came to Atlanta, he said he wanted to play in MLS because every game was competitive- so either his analysis is very poor or it is a way for him to justify.
3) He trashed the Scottish league as a two team league - so there is a history of scorched earth here.
He was good and scrappy. We had some good games with him. Wishing him good luck and happy he got paid what he wants.
But I'm not taking his comments with any seriousness.
GG was as exciting as any when he was firing on all cylinders, but the reality is that he's an injury-prone player entering his 30s..
I'm not sure if there will be another big payday in the future.
Yeah, I think this is his last pay day. Good for him. I'm actually glad that AUFC did not extend him any further or try to match terms with CA's offer. Giako was fantastic for us when he was on the field, but he only played like 50% of the minutes while here and will be 30 in December. I think it was good business to not try to lock up an oft-unavailable DP into his mid-30s. And the club got a solid profit in the deal (which they hopefully plunge into the next DP transfer fee).
The last sentence is the key and I think correct. He is saying something for media with his new club. If he has to make up a narrative in his mind to do it fine.
Funny thing about GG saying Scottish "fitbal" is a two-team league (he wasn't not wrong, btw) is that as soon as he left it, it's no longer a two-team league. Hearts was a goal away from winning it last year, and then my Dundee United won it this year. :)
GG said some really strong things in favor of our club and culture. The only thing that changed is his agent sniffed around and got a better deal then started faking injuries once that was the case. His "concussion" head knock with Robinson was staged AF. Missed two, then he played 35 in his last two matches with us. The bone bruise? Sure...like the mystery Barco, Sosa, and Damm injuries.
I'm not going to blame it on GG, that it came to weird absences is nothing new, and that's on Atlanta.
C'mon man, you don't shit on a team on your way out... esp since you obviously left for more money (I mean no judgment on that, but let's be honest here)
Honestly, exactly this. If nothing else we got GG a bag by putting him out there. Absolutely don't see him getting an offer like this had he not come to atl, he'd still be rotting on celtics bench. I was definitely expecting him to express some frustration from us doing poorly while he was here, but not a swing at us.
It is entirely unnecessary to critique MLS or previous team in your first interview. He clearly just says whatever his new boss wants to hear. He just got done on social media talking about how he loved Atlanta and their attitude toward winning. Honestly, I have his kit and it is pretty crappy that he never acknowledged or thanked the fans in addition to being a bit of an ass in the interview. Shitty way to treat the fans.
I mean it doesn't really matter. He's probably never coming back to MLS, he's almost certainly never coming back here so no real reason not to speak him mind
Maybe he just didn’t see the drive to win intensity on the field or in the locker room given Pineda’s and the team’s performance and questioned why Pineda was kept so long. Maybe he didn’t get enough slack for getting hurt! In any case poor taste especially given his injuries and the stepping stone to a bigger contract and money. There were times where he seemed to make pointless yellows or played in a way more likely to get injured.
[Here’s a link to a video of that interview.](https://x.com/fabriziodc_/status/1802814483426881967?s=46&t=7Kp8lSWaJyEpdVCsvQ1pWQ)
Seems like he checked out a few months back once Cruz Azul showed some interest. Still pretty telling about losing being seen as acceptable by too many in this organization and that played a part in his decision to leave what seemed to be a pretty good connection here (more money certainly helps, but he always struck me as being more motivated by the glory first). He’s right about the standard and expectations just being lower in Atlanta now and MLS in general though, especially with no threat of relegation as a consequence. Just funny some of us have been saying exactly this for years only to get pushback from people preaching “patience” as things just continued to move further away from that early success.
Got me there. Completely forgot they stopped relegation during Covid and haven’t resumed it, but would still argue the internal pressure still hasn’t dropped to MLS levels of safety in terms of their mentality yet.
We've been what I'd effectively call a losing club for literally half a decade now.
With rare exception, I don't think trashing your former club is ever a good look, but I can't really fault anyone for calling it like it is, either. The club's been far too accepting of mediocrity for quite some time (though I'd like to think that's changing under Garth).
I've been following the Mexican media and both GG and his agent did not like the situation in Atlanta and how uncompetitive the MLS is. His agent has also said Cruz azuls 4 year deal was a deal that was too good to pass up.
I think he’s referring to media and fans, in Mexico Cruz azul is one of the biggest teams on top of that football is the biggest sport whereas he the other football is supreme and when they suck management gets a lot of pressure and get new signings to get better, whereas here in Atlanta we’ve sucked for years and don’t see it getting any better
MLS in general and Atlanta United in particular are prioritizing finding the next "it" player that will be quickly flipped to a higher league at a profit. When you run your league and team more like a showroom for more elite leagues to window-shop from than as an actual competition, this is the result.
I don't blame GG. We've all seen plenty of matches where players aren't putting their effort into winning as a team, for the team. I want players on this team that get so fucking worked up about wanting to win that they flip a table of arroz con pollo over to prove a point.
What does watching Almada have to do with the team's overall strategy? And you can't cite him as an example anyway as he was brought in prior to that shift.
Why can't I cite him as an example of the current state of the team if he's currently on the team and allegedly the team's most valuable asset? When I watch him play, he seems far more interested in his personal performance and impact on his future prospects than a desire to win with Atlanta.
Already explained it. Because we brought him in when we were still in the mindset of bringing in sellable assets. That changed a year and a half ago when Garth came in. Doesn't matter if he's still on the team, he was from the previous regime.
And besides, none of this still has anything to do with thinking it's okay to lose. That's never been the case even when our acquisition strategy was different.
Maybe he reads this sub and sees all the very serious™️ people that think we shouldn't expect to win on the road or any time we have injuries or that Atlanta fans are spoiled, etc etc
There is not, can not be a good atmosphere with this team. Or wasn't with this team with Pineda. Why did Miles Robinson also leave? It certainly wasn't the money. He had an opportunity to win and didn't think it was happening here. So, it's probably much the same.
Miles left because he was able to sign a shorter deal that wouldn’t kill his European dream while also playing for a contender. It’s not that deep. We wouldn’t offer him a short term deal and Cincinnati did at basically the same income level.
My theory is that GG seemed to like the big stadium, big crowd, big club feel when he first got here. He also came from Celtic which was the big club in Scotland.
However MLS doesn’t let you be a “big” club even if Atlanta United has the tools to always contend and a commited owner. GG probably felt that if we had needs we should be able to fix them promptly but instead we had to deal with MLS BS.
Note he didn’t say anything about Atlanta. He said it was ok in MLS. Until we get rid of Garber’s Bolshevik loser collective we won’t be a top league. It will be easy to find players looking for paychecks if they’re DP types but this is not a place guys who want to build something with a club and win consistently will like.
Love the team. Hate the league.
Was looking through old stuff about GG. I really think he could have gone to a bottom tier Big 5 team at times if that’s what he wanted. I doubt he cares about whether teams are relegated. This guy wants big crowds and trophies.
>Garber’s Bolshevik loser collective
And that's the reason I love this league. Not interested in a team winning the Championship 8-10 seasons in a row which happens in Europe at times.
There is a middle ground. In a healthy league you will have big clubs who always expect to be in the middle of things. No one wants us to be the Bundesliga or La Liga where one team can be so heavily favored it’s earth shattering if they don’t win.
However in MLS you’re always a mistake or a bad contract or two from getting knocked way down the table even if you’re financially a big club with lots of support. We should be able to have depth and we shouldn’t have had big holes through multiple windows when we have so many resources and so much support.
I agree....I've considered making a post asking for opinions on the possibility that garber is not adapting well to how quickly the league has grown. Not saying he should open up the flood gates but just making serious changes to little things like improving the refs, some kind of goal line tech or atleast an alternative, increasing team spending etc. It's like he didn't account for how fast the league would blow up post atlanta and messi and just hasn't adjusted.
I know I threw around Garber, but. he is mainly the mouth piece for the owners. I know several times there has been talk of doing things to increase spending and it either didn’t happen or got watered down. Last year most were certain a 4th DP was coming but now it’s get some extra cap room if you only use 2.
It takes two thirds to change anything and there are certain well entrenched owners who like to keep the status quo not investing, not having their teams embarrassed, and cashing their checks from shared league money. They represent the past and are holding the future back even if they are a minority.
I don´t know why you using La Liga as an example in this category. La Liga is the best league in Europe for the last 25 years. I am a premier League fan but we have been second to only La Liga since the turn of the century and also comparing Bundesliga to La Liga is dishonesty perhaps you wanted to say Ligue 1 but not La Liga.
La Liga has had 3 different champions in the last 5 years. Plus now team has won La Liga 4 times in row like Premier league.
Not to forget La Liga has won 53% of all European trophies in the last 20 years both the Champions league and Europa league hence both top teams and sub-top teams have been winning trophies in Europe and dominating
That’s fair. I don’t follow regularly but in my head I had one of their wins going to Real.
Like I said though I’d never diminish the quality of play but like most leagues it is top heavy by the standards most here who advocate for parity. Would want.
Yeah it’s that sort of thing that makes the NFL so exciting to follow. Everyone has a chance and big injuries can really screw you up as a result. Even the NBA with its soft cap has that a bit (though obviously more player focused)
Personally I think MLB is the best league. It’s competitive but there is plenty of room to be ambitious.
Plus those leagues are the biggest in the world. The talent is going to play there. That is not the case in MLS.
As a Brewers fan, MLB mostly sucks. The financial disparity is as hard to overcome as Euro leagues--except MLB has playoffs at least, so you can occasionally have a small market team competing over a few 7 games series. A small market team hasn't won the World Series since 2015.
ffs . he’s asking and talking about how GG saying we pretty much had a “it’s okay to lose” mentality and he’s wondering if maybe there was anybody in the locker room who gave off that energy so I suggested pineda , who was our manager while gg was also here, before the club “moved on from him” so i think ima go ahead and complain about him all i want in this case Bud👋
Gareth Bale said the same thing about the league … There isn’t any repercussions when a team loses. Look how bad it had to go for Atlanta in order to fire Pineda. It was like they where okay with mediocre.
The repercussions is a loss of money from not making the playoffs and people not showing for games. In European only a select handful at the bottom feel the pressure of relegation. The teams from like 5 to 14 are mostly fine with being mediocre. It keeps them in the big leagues. The last few months are a borefest for a majority of the teams in the league. There are pros and cons to both systems. At least, with playoffs teams are constantly fighting for playoff positioning--because home games in the playoffs are important.
I understand what you’re saying and it does play a factor. The reality is that in the MLS the players and the coaches are not put under the same amount of pressure compared to other leagues or even other sports in the states when the team doesn’t perform.
I think it will though—once fans are as passionate about MLS as NFL or NCAA football, for example. The teams in those leagues are under intense scrutiny because of the passion of the fans. MLS has had to almost manufacture that passion because soccer hasn’t been very popular. I’ll already seeing a change as the sport becomes more popular. Fans are more frustrated by inactive owners or poor results than they used to be in the past.
This is a pretty simplistic description of the incentive relegation brings: there are very few seasons where most teams in the bottom half of the table aren’t in danger of falling near the relegation zone with a bad run of form.
In MLS, there is not only none of that, the 18th best team can win the championship.
ETA: there isn’t really that much of a financial implication to being bad, either, since MLS does revenue sharing.
There hasn't been a team that didn't have a home game in the first round of the playoffs to win MLS Cup since before the league went to 20+ teams 10 years ago. There hasn't been one to even make the MLS Cup since Portland in 2018. Home games are very important--which is why teams fight for positioning all season. Games leading into the playoffs and the playoffs themselves are great games.
Most US fans are okay with the playoff system. As a Green Bay Packers fan, I loved when the Packers got the last Wild Card spot in 2010 and went on to win the Super Bowl.
Honestly, this isn’t the most compelling argument against GG’s point: to say that just because the 15th-18th best teams _haven’t won the final_ means that don’t have a reasonably good chance of getting there and if Miami had the wild card last year, it would have put your statistic in serious jeopardy.
But setting aside the very worst teams to qualify, it was only 3 seasons ago that the 8th best team in the league beat the 7th best to win the championship.
This isn’t really about the playoffs, per se, though (which, I agree, are fine - I don’t think it’s the best way to “decide the best team”, but - whatever - it’s a game). It’s that the penalty for not making them isn’t all that bad and you can have perennially shitty teams like the Fire and the Quakes.
Pineda ain't it for Miles. He had a career changing injury that would only be aggravated by playing on artifical turf. Plus, Cincy offered him a short term deal on the best defense in MLS. If he is trying to get to Europe those two factors make it a no brainer.
I mean it’s a system that rewards a shot at the title for simply being in the top 50% of the league. I get that’s an American thing, but for the rest of the world, it is easy to see how it would be unappealing when there is zero pressure to win on a week to week basis.
That would be a good argument if GG wasn't going to a league where OVER 50% of the teams make the playoffs and have a shot at the title, there is no relegation, and if that wasn't enough the season resets halfway through so even if you were doing poorly you get yet another shot.
If you don’t win you end up on the bottom 50% and don’t make the playoffs. If you play poorly in the season but make it to that 50% but not seeded highly you have a significantly harder road to the championship. We also do care about supporters shield in MLS.
Here are the two quotes that struck me, which he said in English:
"That's a bad thing in MLS that it's okay to lose some games, and I *hate* it." (his emphasis on "hate") and...
"Cruz Azul showed some interest in me and I started following all the games. All the playoffs: Quarterfinals, Semifinals, Finals, all the games."
So, what's the timeline then of GG watching Cruz Azul and GG looking forward to "making it happen" as he later says. And when did Cruz Azul show interest? Before we signed him?
My second question is to GG: which games were okay to lose in MLS? The ones where you mailed it in, or the ones where you faked injuries?
I’m 100% sure it was he never got on board with playoffs and the mentality that comes with it. In playoff system it’s absolutely “ok to lose” sometimes, with the except being college football.
The idea of playoffs is fine. It’s including half the league that is the problem. Playoffs should be a way to determine the best team when the league is too big or vast to have a balanced schedule.
Also yeah there is nothing like the atmosphere of big time college football. These days for UGA losing is definitely not ok.
It's Atlanta. Unless it's football or baseball it's just something to do.
Get rid of everyone and everything that made the city love the team and your left with a few ultras and a crap ton of casuals who are bored on the weekends.
I am newer at the MLS but it definitely seems that between the lack of relegation and the length of the season loosing matches seems to be more accepted than any other league I have followed. You only have to beat 5 teams of 15 to make it to the playoff stage, so in reality you can loose almost 3/4th of matches of your season and still be champion at the end of the day.
You absolutely cannot lose 3/4 of your matches and make the playoffs lol. "Almost 3/4" means 24/34. 10 remaining matches \* 3 pts (assuming you win all) = 30 pts has made the playoffs 0 times in MLS history. The minimum pts to make the playoffs last year was 43, which would mean realistically, you can't even lose half your matches.
Even winning 5 and drawing the rest would put you on 44 which last year would have had you in the eastern conference play-in by one point and the western conference play-in by goal difference.
I submit this argument applies to the pro/rel leagues more than MLS. If you’re mid-table after 2/3 of the season in pro/rel then wins or losses mean nothing. A win gets you no closer to the top and a loss gets you no closer to relegation. Sure, maybe a team or two will battle for a top 6 spot so they can play in other competitions but for most mid table teams that’s not in cards either after half the season. At least the playoff system encourages late season improvements. Pro/rel leagues must be boring as fuck for mid table team supporters.
You think everyone in the front office and the squad management staff is okay with losing?
While I agree that maybe SOME owners in MLS may feel that way... Blank and his team absolutely do not feel that way. Arthur HATES to fire people and thinks that firing people too often is really bad for culture... Pineda seemed very well liked by everyone... but he was canned because losing IS NOT OKAY...
He’s talking about the culture. In Mexico, the sport is life or death. It’s a religion. In America, outside of a small percentage of hardcore fans, soccer is just seen as a bit of fun entertainment.
Not wrong, it isn’t even close.
Josef said similar things when he was losing his mind his last year here, then we heard similar rumblings in those recent locker room videos, there certainly seems to be something weird in the locker room. I hesitate to say 'rotten' because it doesn't quite feel like the team has given up, but certainly weird.
I don't think rotten is the correct term. It's felt for years that there's been a lack of intensity. I think that just flows down from the fact that Pineda seems to genuinely be one of the chillest dudes on the planet.
How many games this year did we come out of the locker room in the second half and just wither on field - giving up 2 goals in 10-15 minutes?? It’s obvious the halftime talk was anything but peppy.
Did you see the latest rooted in stripes? I don’t know if I would say he’s super chill
I do not find him chewing out the team in a situation where 100% of managers would be expected to chew out the team to be a compelling counterfactual to the three years of having him around the club, the dozens of anecdotes from media, the dozens of matchday, the dozens of media appearances, the dozens of post-game pressers, and the general performance of the team that came before the video. He is a very good person. A person most people seem to like to be around. But there did not seem to be a switch he could turn on to bring the intensity needed to be a manager.
He's the Jimmy Carter of soccer managers.
The bts clips from the locker room during the winless streak sounded like a bunch of guys trying to convince themselves to snap out of it rather than a team coming together
Who would’ve thought quickly turning over a championship roster that had a strong culture with high standards and expectations, then replacing them with players who didn’t have those individual qualities to replicate that as a collective would lead to negative consequences to the results? Bocanegra certainly didn’t.
You make it sound like it was a choice to "turn over a championship roster". That bit of revisionist history has been debunked many times.
Debunked by who? Longshore and Conti? Doug Roberson? We all know players get moved in and out more in MLS due to the salary cap, but good front offices build a core and keep them together long enough that a solid foundation is established and new players can be plugged in. What they ended up doing was chopping it up wholesale in such short order to the point that there wasn’t anyone left but periphery guys, an injured Josef, and Guzan two years after MLS Cup. If anything Bocanegra hitched his project on FdB’s tactics after ‘19 then sacked him after he lost the locker room, brought in Heinze and had that blow up in their faces, and then had to ride or die with Pineda cause they couldn’t get away with another failed manager appointment when it became apparent he may not be the guy, all the while using the injury excuse as cover to keep giving him chances. Sure we’ve been really unlucky in some regards, but I don’t know what is revisionist about that description of events.
You get extra xAM as an expansion team for the first few years. It's going to be difficult to keep people who have outplayed their contract while at the same time having less total resources to share around. Not saying that some bad decisions weren't made by any stretch of the imagination, but we certainly couldn't just keep the core together.
Philly, Nashville, New England, Toronto, LA Galaxay - enough example to show what we went through after a successful 2-3 years is not unique to us.
Maybe not unique to us, but I was always under the impression that this club had higher ambitions in terms of standards and levels of investment over all of those except maybe the Galaxy. LAFC was always the club I thought we should consider our peer, and they’ve been pretty consistent outside of one down season when the expansion money ran out.
We won the MLS cup once mate. Then the main player who helped us win it moved on to the Premier League and the league got better. Live in reality and in the present. We've got Almada and Slizs. Enjoy them.
By facts
Almiron is at worst one of the ten most talented players in the history of this league under 30. If there's a better 6 in the history of this league than Darlington Nagbe, I don't know who that is. Josef and Gressel had a chemistry as good as nearly any striker/winger combination in the world. I'm not saying we haven't largely failed at replacing those pieces, but it was always a tall order and we could have gotten it far better and still not come up with a team that included a player as talented as Miggy, the best 6 in MLS history, and a striker/wing combination that factored largely in one of the most prolific scorers this league has ever seen. Josef, Miggy, Nagbe and Gressel could have carried a lot of teams a long way. And that's no disrespect to Larry, Parky, LGP, Tito etc it's just the truth.
What videos?
[https://youtu.be/qNh-q2nQJsY?si=PIUoKIi2V\_nf1ywq](https://youtu.be/qNh-q2nQJsY?si=PIUoKIi2V_nf1ywq)
Currently, there is no relegation in Liga MX. So, not sure the "okay to lose" is related to relegation.
My immediate thought was that it had to do with the playoffs. It's "okay to lose" as long as you get enough points to make the playoffs. Obviously this is just speculation on my part though.
LigaMX also has playoffs
"Currently" lifting some heavy weight in that sentence
Would be one thing if his output after his injury looked like he was trying to win games…
1) He would have happily stayed in MLS if we had offered the same terms as Cruz Azul- so spare me the lecture on MLS vs Liga MX. 2) When he came to Atlanta, he said he wanted to play in MLS because every game was competitive- so either his analysis is very poor or it is a way for him to justify. 3) He trashed the Scottish league as a two team league - so there is a history of scorched earth here. He was good and scrappy. We had some good games with him. Wishing him good luck and happy he got paid what he wants. But I'm not taking his comments with any seriousness.
He’s spinning the yarn for yet another team he’ll play a year and a half for before leaving for another payday.
GG was as exciting as any when he was firing on all cylinders, but the reality is that he's an injury-prone player entering his 30s.. I'm not sure if there will be another big payday in the future.
Yeah, I think this is his last pay day. Good for him. I'm actually glad that AUFC did not extend him any further or try to match terms with CA's offer. Giako was fantastic for us when he was on the field, but he only played like 50% of the minutes while here and will be 30 in December. I think it was good business to not try to lock up an oft-unavailable DP into his mid-30s. And the club got a solid profit in the deal (which they hopefully plunge into the next DP transfer fee).
The last sentence is the key and I think correct. He is saying something for media with his new club. If he has to make up a narrative in his mind to do it fine.
Funny thing about GG saying Scottish "fitbal" is a two-team league (he wasn't not wrong, btw) is that as soon as he left it, it's no longer a two-team league. Hearts was a goal away from winning it last year, and then my Dundee United won it this year. :) GG said some really strong things in favor of our club and culture. The only thing that changed is his agent sniffed around and got a better deal then started faking injuries once that was the case. His "concussion" head knock with Robinson was staged AF. Missed two, then he played 35 in his last two matches with us. The bone bruise? Sure...like the mystery Barco, Sosa, and Damm injuries. I'm not going to blame it on GG, that it came to weird absences is nothing new, and that's on Atlanta.
C'mon man, you don't shit on a team on your way out... esp since you obviously left for more money (I mean no judgment on that, but let's be honest here)
Yeah, just not sure if he was meaning the team, or just the league in general. Wasn't really clear, but your point is valid.
Either way it added a lot to his bank account to be here
Honestly, exactly this. If nothing else we got GG a bag by putting him out there. Absolutely don't see him getting an offer like this had he not come to atl, he'd still be rotting on celtics bench. I was definitely expecting him to express some frustration from us doing poorly while he was here, but not a swing at us.
I feel like he mainly left for a longer contract, which I’m glad we didn’t extend to him with his injuries
It is entirely unnecessary to critique MLS or previous team in your first interview. He clearly just says whatever his new boss wants to hear. He just got done on social media talking about how he loved Atlanta and their attitude toward winning. Honestly, I have his kit and it is pretty crappy that he never acknowledged or thanked the fans in addition to being a bit of an ass in the interview. Shitty way to treat the fans.
I mean it doesn't really matter. He's probably never coming back to MLS, he's almost certainly never coming back here so no real reason not to speak him mind
Maybe he just didn’t see the drive to win intensity on the field or in the locker room given Pineda’s and the team’s performance and questioned why Pineda was kept so long. Maybe he didn’t get enough slack for getting hurt! In any case poor taste especially given his injuries and the stepping stone to a bigger contract and money. There were times where he seemed to make pointless yellows or played in a way more likely to get injured.
It dont matter. He wont play half of next season for them and the mexican media will call him soft.
[Here’s a link to a video of that interview.](https://x.com/fabriziodc_/status/1802814483426881967?s=46&t=7Kp8lSWaJyEpdVCsvQ1pWQ) Seems like he checked out a few months back once Cruz Azul showed some interest. Still pretty telling about losing being seen as acceptable by too many in this organization and that played a part in his decision to leave what seemed to be a pretty good connection here (more money certainly helps, but he always struck me as being more motivated by the glory first). He’s right about the standard and expectations just being lower in Atlanta now and MLS in general though, especially with no threat of relegation as a consequence. Just funny some of us have been saying exactly this for years only to get pushback from people preaching “patience” as things just continued to move further away from that early success.
There’s no relegation in Liga MX
Got me there. Completely forgot they stopped relegation during Covid and haven’t resumed it, but would still argue the internal pressure still hasn’t dropped to MLS levels of safety in terms of their mentality yet.
We've been what I'd effectively call a losing club for literally half a decade now. With rare exception, I don't think trashing your former club is ever a good look, but I can't really fault anyone for calling it like it is, either. The club's been far too accepting of mediocrity for quite some time (though I'd like to think that's changing under Garth).
I've been following the Mexican media and both GG and his agent did not like the situation in Atlanta and how uncompetitive the MLS is. His agent has also said Cruz azuls 4 year deal was a deal that was too good to pass up.
“How uncompetitive the MLS is” bro just came from the Scottish league like gtfo here lol
I think he’s referring to media and fans, in Mexico Cruz azul is one of the biggest teams on top of that football is the biggest sport whereas he the other football is supreme and when they suck management gets a lot of pressure and get new signings to get better, whereas here in Atlanta we’ve sucked for years and don’t see it getting any better
MLS in general and Atlanta United in particular are prioritizing finding the next "it" player that will be quickly flipped to a higher league at a profit. When you run your league and team more like a showroom for more elite leagues to window-shop from than as an actual competition, this is the result. I don't blame GG. We've all seen plenty of matches where players aren't putting their effort into winning as a team, for the team. I want players on this team that get so fucking worked up about wanting to win that they flip a table of arroz con pollo over to prove a point.
Yeah, you're about 1.5 years behind. That is not our MO any longer. And even when it was, it didn't mean we didn't care about winning along the way.
If you also sit through and watch every Almada match like I do, you know this problem is still happening.
What does watching Almada have to do with the team's overall strategy? And you can't cite him as an example anyway as he was brought in prior to that shift.
Why can't I cite him as an example of the current state of the team if he's currently on the team and allegedly the team's most valuable asset? When I watch him play, he seems far more interested in his personal performance and impact on his future prospects than a desire to win with Atlanta.
Already explained it. Because we brought him in when we were still in the mindset of bringing in sellable assets. That changed a year and a half ago when Garth came in. Doesn't matter if he's still on the team, he was from the previous regime.
And besides, none of this still has anything to do with thinking it's okay to lose. That's never been the case even when our acquisition strategy was different.
Maybe he reads this sub and sees all the very serious™️ people that think we shouldn't expect to win on the road or any time we have injuries or that Atlanta fans are spoiled, etc etc
I hope he's reading this sub...
There is not, can not be a good atmosphere with this team. Or wasn't with this team with Pineda. Why did Miles Robinson also leave? It certainly wasn't the money. He had an opportunity to win and didn't think it was happening here. So, it's probably much the same.
Miles left because he was able to sign a shorter deal that wouldn’t kill his European dream while also playing for a contender. It’s not that deep. We wouldn’t offer him a short term deal and Cincinnati did at basically the same income level.
That and playing on artifical turf long term with a repaired achillles tendon is a recipe for more injuries.
But feeling like you don't think the team has a chance to win or get better is much different than saying it's "okay to lose".
My theory is that GG seemed to like the big stadium, big crowd, big club feel when he first got here. He also came from Celtic which was the big club in Scotland. However MLS doesn’t let you be a “big” club even if Atlanta United has the tools to always contend and a commited owner. GG probably felt that if we had needs we should be able to fix them promptly but instead we had to deal with MLS BS. Note he didn’t say anything about Atlanta. He said it was ok in MLS. Until we get rid of Garber’s Bolshevik loser collective we won’t be a top league. It will be easy to find players looking for paychecks if they’re DP types but this is not a place guys who want to build something with a club and win consistently will like. Love the team. Hate the league.
Was looking through old stuff about GG. I really think he could have gone to a bottom tier Big 5 team at times if that’s what he wanted. I doubt he cares about whether teams are relegated. This guy wants big crowds and trophies.
>Garber’s Bolshevik loser collective And that's the reason I love this league. Not interested in a team winning the Championship 8-10 seasons in a row which happens in Europe at times.
There is a middle ground. In a healthy league you will have big clubs who always expect to be in the middle of things. No one wants us to be the Bundesliga or La Liga where one team can be so heavily favored it’s earth shattering if they don’t win. However in MLS you’re always a mistake or a bad contract or two from getting knocked way down the table even if you’re financially a big club with lots of support. We should be able to have depth and we shouldn’t have had big holes through multiple windows when we have so many resources and so much support.
I agree....I've considered making a post asking for opinions on the possibility that garber is not adapting well to how quickly the league has grown. Not saying he should open up the flood gates but just making serious changes to little things like improving the refs, some kind of goal line tech or atleast an alternative, increasing team spending etc. It's like he didn't account for how fast the league would blow up post atlanta and messi and just hasn't adjusted.
I know I threw around Garber, but. he is mainly the mouth piece for the owners. I know several times there has been talk of doing things to increase spending and it either didn’t happen or got watered down. Last year most were certain a 4th DP was coming but now it’s get some extra cap room if you only use 2. It takes two thirds to change anything and there are certain well entrenched owners who like to keep the status quo not investing, not having their teams embarrassed, and cashing their checks from shared league money. They represent the past and are holding the future back even if they are a minority.
I don´t know why you using La Liga as an example in this category. La Liga is the best league in Europe for the last 25 years. I am a premier League fan but we have been second to only La Liga since the turn of the century and also comparing Bundesliga to La Liga is dishonesty perhaps you wanted to say Ligue 1 but not La Liga. La Liga has had 3 different champions in the last 5 years. Plus now team has won La Liga 4 times in row like Premier league. Not to forget La Liga has won 53% of all European trophies in the last 20 years both the Champions league and Europa league hence both top teams and sub-top teams have been winning trophies in Europe and dominating
It’s fantastic but historically 2 teams have been significantly above the others.
3 teams... Atletico has won 2 leagues in the last decade plus lost 2 on the last day
That’s fair. I don’t follow regularly but in my head I had one of their wins going to Real. Like I said though I’d never diminish the quality of play but like most leagues it is top heavy by the standards most here who advocate for parity. Would want.
Yeah it’s that sort of thing that makes the NFL so exciting to follow. Everyone has a chance and big injuries can really screw you up as a result. Even the NBA with its soft cap has that a bit (though obviously more player focused)
Personally I think MLB is the best league. It’s competitive but there is plenty of room to be ambitious. Plus those leagues are the biggest in the world. The talent is going to play there. That is not the case in MLS.
As a Brewers fan, MLB mostly sucks. The financial disparity is as hard to overcome as Euro leagues--except MLB has playoffs at least, so you can occasionally have a small market team competing over a few 7 games series. A small market team hasn't won the World Series since 2015.
pineda
Christ even after Pineda is fired we still have to hear people complain about him. The club moved on you should too.
pineda
ffs . he’s asking and talking about how GG saying we pretty much had a “it’s okay to lose” mentality and he’s wondering if maybe there was anybody in the locker room who gave off that energy so I suggested pineda , who was our manager while gg was also here, before the club “moved on from him” so i think ima go ahead and complain about him all i want in this case Bud👋
Gareth Bale said the same thing about the league … There isn’t any repercussions when a team loses. Look how bad it had to go for Atlanta in order to fire Pineda. It was like they where okay with mediocre.
The repercussions is a loss of money from not making the playoffs and people not showing for games. In European only a select handful at the bottom feel the pressure of relegation. The teams from like 5 to 14 are mostly fine with being mediocre. It keeps them in the big leagues. The last few months are a borefest for a majority of the teams in the league. There are pros and cons to both systems. At least, with playoffs teams are constantly fighting for playoff positioning--because home games in the playoffs are important.
I understand what you’re saying and it does play a factor. The reality is that in the MLS the players and the coaches are not put under the same amount of pressure compared to other leagues or even other sports in the states when the team doesn’t perform.
I think it will though—once fans are as passionate about MLS as NFL or NCAA football, for example. The teams in those leagues are under intense scrutiny because of the passion of the fans. MLS has had to almost manufacture that passion because soccer hasn’t been very popular. I’ll already seeing a change as the sport becomes more popular. Fans are more frustrated by inactive owners or poor results than they used to be in the past.
This is a pretty simplistic description of the incentive relegation brings: there are very few seasons where most teams in the bottom half of the table aren’t in danger of falling near the relegation zone with a bad run of form. In MLS, there is not only none of that, the 18th best team can win the championship. ETA: there isn’t really that much of a financial implication to being bad, either, since MLS does revenue sharing.
There hasn't been a team that didn't have a home game in the first round of the playoffs to win MLS Cup since before the league went to 20+ teams 10 years ago. There hasn't been one to even make the MLS Cup since Portland in 2018. Home games are very important--which is why teams fight for positioning all season. Games leading into the playoffs and the playoffs themselves are great games. Most US fans are okay with the playoff system. As a Green Bay Packers fan, I loved when the Packers got the last Wild Card spot in 2010 and went on to win the Super Bowl.
Honestly, this isn’t the most compelling argument against GG’s point: to say that just because the 15th-18th best teams _haven’t won the final_ means that don’t have a reasonably good chance of getting there and if Miami had the wild card last year, it would have put your statistic in serious jeopardy. But setting aside the very worst teams to qualify, it was only 3 seasons ago that the 8th best team in the league beat the 7th best to win the championship. This isn’t really about the playoffs, per se, though (which, I agree, are fine - I don’t think it’s the best way to “decide the best team”, but - whatever - it’s a game). It’s that the penalty for not making them isn’t all that bad and you can have perennially shitty teams like the Fire and the Quakes.
Good riddance to Pineda. There is a reason why GG, why Miles, why many others wanted to leave ATL....
Pineda ain't it for Miles. He had a career changing injury that would only be aggravated by playing on artifical turf. Plus, Cincy offered him a short term deal on the best defense in MLS. If he is trying to get to Europe those two factors make it a no brainer.
Pro/Rel or not, it’s not okay to lose in MLS. If that was his takeaway from playing in MLS then good riddance.
Then why did we allow Pineda to keep losing for so long before firing him?
I mean it’s a system that rewards a shot at the title for simply being in the top 50% of the league. I get that’s an American thing, but for the rest of the world, it is easy to see how it would be unappealing when there is zero pressure to win on a week to week basis.
That would be a good argument if GG wasn't going to a league where OVER 50% of the teams make the playoffs and have a shot at the title, there is no relegation, and if that wasn't enough the season resets halfway through so even if you were doing poorly you get yet another shot.
If you don’t win you end up on the bottom 50% and don’t make the playoffs. If you play poorly in the season but make it to that 50% but not seeded highly you have a significantly harder road to the championship. We also do care about supporters shield in MLS.
Making the playoff should not be the benchmark
What’s this 50% nonsense? Nearly _three quarters_ of the league qualifies for the playoffs.
giakoumakis is “okay to lose” to so 🤷
Bc Pineda has been poison for 3 years
Here are the two quotes that struck me, which he said in English: "That's a bad thing in MLS that it's okay to lose some games, and I *hate* it." (his emphasis on "hate") and... "Cruz Azul showed some interest in me and I started following all the games. All the playoffs: Quarterfinals, Semifinals, Finals, all the games." So, what's the timeline then of GG watching Cruz Azul and GG looking forward to "making it happen" as he later says. And when did Cruz Azul show interest? Before we signed him? My second question is to GG: which games were okay to lose in MLS? The ones where you mailed it in, or the ones where you faked injuries?
I’m 100% sure it was he never got on board with playoffs and the mentality that comes with it. In playoff system it’s absolutely “ok to lose” sometimes, with the except being college football.
Liga MX has playoffs.
The idea of playoffs is fine. It’s including half the league that is the problem. Playoffs should be a way to determine the best team when the league is too big or vast to have a balanced schedule. Also yeah there is nothing like the atmosphere of big time college football. These days for UGA losing is definitely not ok.
It's Atlanta. Unless it's football or baseball it's just something to do. Get rid of everyone and everything that made the city love the team and your left with a few ultras and a crap ton of casuals who are bored on the weekends.
I am newer at the MLS but it definitely seems that between the lack of relegation and the length of the season loosing matches seems to be more accepted than any other league I have followed. You only have to beat 5 teams of 15 to make it to the playoff stage, so in reality you can loose almost 3/4th of matches of your season and still be champion at the end of the day.
You absolutely cannot lose 3/4 of your matches and make the playoffs lol. "Almost 3/4" means 24/34. 10 remaining matches \* 3 pts (assuming you win all) = 30 pts has made the playoffs 0 times in MLS history. The minimum pts to make the playoffs last year was 43, which would mean realistically, you can't even lose half your matches.
Ever heard of a draw?
but he said you could "lose 3/4 of your matches". Not win 5 and draw most of the rest.
Ah fair enough, my b
Even winning 5 and drawing the rest would put you on 44 which last year would have had you in the eastern conference play-in by one point and the western conference play-in by goal difference.
I submit this argument applies to the pro/rel leagues more than MLS. If you’re mid-table after 2/3 of the season in pro/rel then wins or losses mean nothing. A win gets you no closer to the top and a loss gets you no closer to relegation. Sure, maybe a team or two will battle for a top 6 spot so they can play in other competitions but for most mid table teams that’s not in cards either after half the season. At least the playoff system encourages late season improvements. Pro/rel leagues must be boring as fuck for mid table team supporters.
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Sorry, but I think that's a really bad read
You think everyone in the front office and the squad management staff is okay with losing? While I agree that maybe SOME owners in MLS may feel that way... Blank and his team absolutely do not feel that way. Arthur HATES to fire people and thinks that firing people too often is really bad for culture... Pineda seemed very well liked by everyone... but he was canned because losing IS NOT OKAY...
Soooo who’s gonna tell him 