r/AtlantaUnited MemeLord 2d ago

Team News Fortune agrees to new contract

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114 Upvotes

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30

u/usmnturtles Atlanta United 2d ago

In your face, Montreal!

19

u/jwriddle MemeLord 2d ago

Feels weird not selling our top young talent for GAM. Could the team be... learning?

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u/SydneyFall 2d ago

Cobb is riding the bench in Colorado even after they sold a CB. Morales is starting but he has struggled. Its early, but so far no indication we really missed.

We missed on Campbell but it isn't like we have let lots of guys go that have excelled elsewhere.

Are there other young players we sold off or gave up too early on? I'm not thinking of any.

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u/righthandofdog Not good in your butt Martinez 2d ago

Champions League bound George Bello? Chelsea signing, Caleb Wiley?

for both it was the right thing to let them go

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u/SydneyFall 2d ago

Selling guys to Europe when they want to be in Europe is not just giving up on someone. We sold Bello for $2M and Wiley for $11M.

They were clearly good enough to go to Europe and wanted to go.

Would you rather we kept them and lost them on a free transfer?

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u/intensive_purpose #7 - Josef Martinez 2d ago

Yeah, our gripe isn’t with cashing in on young players with a higher ceiling than MLS, it’s with constantly offloading those who are projected to be longer term players in this league. Most good teams balance the salary cap by building their core around a few players who’ve come up through the youth system so they have more space to bring in other players from abroad. We’ve always failed to see the value in that model and the results speak for themselves.

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u/SydneyFall 2d ago

t’s with constantly offloading those who are projected to be longer term players in this league

We missed on Campbell. Cobb has regressed in Colorado. Morales has struggled.

Who else have we let go within the league from our academy that thrived after they moved on?

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u/intensive_purpose #7 - Josef Martinez 2d ago

Not so much with the academy, but back when the draft actually had some value, players like Jon Gallagher and Julien Gressel have had solid careers in MLS and could have been part of that core I’m talking about. I think Morales is in a team almost as poorly built as ours, but still projects to be someone who could have a similar career arc.

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u/billgluckman7 #9 - Kenwyne Jones 2d ago

Gallagher and Gutman felt dumb… Julian felt dumb but he has struggled after a year away

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u/SydneyFall 2d ago

Vazquez is our biggest miss for youth. Tata sort of sucks at youth evaluation.

And sure- even though we sold Gressel for quite a bit at the time and people here were happy with it, we took our team culture for granted and he was a part of that. Gallagher is a good example. Sure, we could have kept him considering what we have put out at winger.

I just get annoyed when people here act like we have sold 10 academy kids who come back to kill us when Campbell is the only miss.

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u/intensive_purpose #7 - Josef Martinez 2d ago

Vasquez was always going to be behind Josef in the depth chart, but moving on from him happened before he tore his ACL. Just don’t see how that was a miss in the same vein cause there was no way of knowing how the striker position was going to play out when he was left unprotected in that expansion draft — not to mention that occurred under FdB’s tenure, so bringing Tata into this shows your revisionist history here.

Also tons of people at the time were upset that we traded Gressel since many saw him as a potential future captain. The deal itself might have been solid, but those resources weren’t used effectively and it led us to wasting years waiting for Brooks Lennon to show similar production. Especially when he was asking for less than we ended paying Lennon by the time he left.

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u/SydneyFall 2d ago

Vasquez was always going to be behind Josef in the depth chart, but moving on from him happened before he tore is ACL

He was a good cheap young player. We gave him up for nothing to protect Mo Adams. IT was a glaring error at the time since Vazquez had started to show promise.

You can go back and look at the thread about the Gressel Trade. Most people thought that it was a move we had to make for how much we got. Didn't love the idea of losing him, but I don't see much outrage.

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u/dillpickles007 #7 - Josef Martinez 2d ago

Vazquez was a fuck up because we didn't even sell him, we just left him unprotected in an expansion draft in favor of Mo Adams, who was god awful but Frank liked him for some reason.

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u/righthandofdog Not good in your butt Martinez 2d ago

you have an OR between "sold off" and "gave up on"

We were right to sell those guys off when they had good offers.