What has your club been up to? What would be a successful season?
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It has been just 77 days since New York City FC lifted the MLS Cup in Portland, but the 2022 Major League Soccer season begins this weekend.
Much has changed in this short offseason. Some big names have left, some bigger names are en route, there’s a new team, and an old team has a new look.
Sit down, grab a drink, get comfortable. With the help of Jeff Carlisle, Kyle Bonagura, Caitlin Murray, Dan Hajducky, James Tyler, Danny Guerra and Austin Lindberg, we’re going to break down where each of the league’s now-28 clubs stands on the eve of the new season, and what it will take for any of them to celebrate with a parade of their own come November.
What they’ve been up to: The Five Stripes have basically been trying to remake the team in the image of Gonzalo Pineda, who will begin his first full season as Atlanta manager after taking over midway through the previous campaign. And they’ve been doing it in a way that again sets the bar for the rest of the league.
Biggest offseason move: Atlanta has made a few moves but none were bigger than the acquisition of attacking midfielder Thiago Almada from Argentine side Velez Sarsfield for a league-record fee of $16 million. Almost as important is who is going out the door, with Ezequiel Barco — who never lived up to his own $15M price tag — headed to River Plate.
2022 will be a success if …: Atlanta returns to the league’s elite.
Let’s face it, the Five Stripes have struggled ever since Tata Martino left to take over the Mexico national team. The Frank de Boer era was wracked with dysfunction. The brief tenure of Gabriel Heinze was orders of magnitude worse.
Pineda is expected to fix all of that. The good news is Atlanta is still willing to spend for top talent, but the Barco and Pity Martinez experiences show that spending isn’t a guarantee of anything. Free-agent signing Ozzie Alonso could be an under-the-radar acquisition that provides some glue to Pineda’s side. Andrew Gutman will need to step in at left-back for departed…
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Source : espn
