Atlanta United have just completed the greatest upset in MLS history. A team that finished 34 points behind Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami coming in and bloodying the big dogs over the course of a three-match playoff series (a newish MLS playoff format) chock-full of drama. Xande Silva’s last-minute winner. Bartosz Slisz hanging in the air for what seemed like decades in the cavernous gap of the Inter Miami defence to head home the series winner. Brad Guzan being pushed into his own goal and falling into the sunken place, writhing around in the netting like freshly caught sea trout.
All good, all broad-strokes fun, all easily digestible. But this doesn’t tell the full story of a team and fan group determined to spoil the fun. Of Guzan, a 40-year-old who came back from serious injury to steer Atlanta into the next round with save after save. Of success and setbacks, the creeping doubts and the resilience to keep coming back, to vanquish the MLS’ Monstars. And no one had a better seat than Tyler Pilgrim, founder of Atlanta Utd news outlet Scarves and Spikes, an ATL OG who has been covering the club from the very beginning. This is what it meant to him and to all Atlanta United fans.
This win has kind of brought the feeling back from when Atlanta Utd first came into the league, where we started so hot, winning the MLS Cup in the second year and the Open Cup and Campeones Cup in 2019. But then 2020 happened, and things just fell apart in every way. And since then, every year has had the feeling of trying to get back to the glory days. Atlanta has some of the biggest aspirations in Major League Soccer. They showed it in the beginning, and then it kind of got off the rails in terms of bringing in superstars that maybe didn’t fit, bringing in coaches that maybe didn’t fit, and you have this, you know, beautiful, amazing stadium that breaks attendance records all the time.
People are still filling the stadium, but recently, the enthusiasm hasn’t fully been there to the same degree that it was at the start. And by the end of the regular season, there were a lot of fans who didn’t know if this team deserved to make it into the playoffs. If they just need to rebuild for next year and take the off-season to reset. And then they go down to Orlando in the last regular season game, and we get into the playoffs, and everybody was like, alright cool, but we’re not gonna make it far.
But then you beat Montreal in the wildcard game, defeat our old superstar Josef Martínez, and all of a sudden, it’s like, okay, maybe we embrace it, take on that underdog mentality because we’ve never had to be underdogs before, really. And you have a team like Miami that has Messi, that has Suárez, you know, all these guys.
I think a lot of fans simply wanted their team, Atlanta, to be the one that shut Major League Soccer up about the constant Messi talk. You know, it was almost a little vindictive, I guess. Especially ’cause it is Messi, Messi, Messi, relentlessly.
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