Dirty South Soccer: For Atlanta United Fc Fans

In front of 73,019 fans from a recently deceased bad sports town, Atlanta United broke a 23-year-old Atlanta curse by beating the Portland Timbers 2-0 to claim the two-year-old club’s first MLS Cup. Not only did the win mark the end of a decades long drought, it marked the culmination of perhaps the most successful expansion plan in sports history. Attendance records shattered. A city captured. A championship in just two years. “This club had a plan from the very beginning,” Tata Martino said through a translator. “From the first time we spoke in September of 2016 in Rosario. The important thing is this club never modified anything from those plans they had told me. It’s what makes this club successful. This club had a plan and the directors followed that plan to a tee.” It certainly wasn’t a perfect plan. There were flaws. Missteps. But a stunningly successful one all the same, and one that leaves everyone with a laundry list of people to thank. People like MLS and MLS Cup MVP Josef Martinez, for one. Bu