A brief analytical look at Atlanta United in 2025 and what it means for 2026

Bad team was bad

via Atlanta United

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I mean, the key analytic here is 28 points. Or maybe you’re more interested in the team scoring just 38 goals? What about allowing 63? We can nerd deep dive all we want, but there’s absolutely nothing to latch onto from Atlanta United’s 2025 that’s truly positive. But maybe instead of a giant flaming ball of rat king, 2025 might have been a slightly smaller giant flaming ball of rat king.

You might have checked out American Soccer Analysis’s Atlanta United preview last week. Paul Harvey—good follow, check out his stuff when you can—rightly points out that Atlanta United were, technically, historically unlucky last year. ASA’s expected points metric suggested Atlanta United underperformed their underlying numbers by about 15 points. That’s the second biggest underperformance in ASA’s database, which goes back to 2013.

That sounds like cause for optimism, but it’s important to remember 15 extra points for 2025 Atlanta United would have put them on 43 points. Average performance relative to their xG would have meant they missed the playoffs by 10 points.

You also have to consider that this team spent *a lot* of time playing from behind. In even game states, Atlanta United’s average expected goal differential was -0.29, the fourth-worst mark in the league. They were able to do a decent job of piling on xG when they were chasing the game, but, again, it can’t be understated that they were behind like literally all the time. Check these charts from Tony ElHabr on BlueSky.

A couple of things stand out immediately. First, you can see how Atlanta’s xGD compares to other teams when trailing. Their underlyings were among the best in the league in that game state. Then there were the fleeting moments they were leading…

Dear. God.

Take a look in particular at their performance when leading against non-playoff teams. I mean, the big thing here is that they practically never led against non-playoff teams. Ballpark estimate here, but it looks like they spent about 5% of their playing time against non-playoff teams actually leading the game. When they actually did lead, their xGD per 90 was -5.46. It’s a hilariously small sample size, but they were spectacularly bad in the brief moments they offered a glimmer of hope.

So, yeah. Technically unlucky. Objectively still terrible.

I’ve mentioned this in multiple places, but I’m willing to blame Ronny Deila’s tactics and man management for some of last year. The tactics were stale and bland. The players were unresponsive and unwilling to give anything extra for a manager they were seemingly out on pretty early in the process. That’s on him.

That isn’t to let the players entirely off the hook, though. This? This is disgusting.

You have three returning players who ended 2025 with positive goals added numbers. One of them is a center back who can’t stay healthy. The other is a left back who they seem to be trying to replace for basically no reason.

Regardless of how bad things are with the manager, this level of performance is shambolic, especially for your DP and TAM players.

We can at least try and look on the bright side here. There’s an argument that the negative feedback loop became too powerful last year and no one could have put up great numbers. I’m not sure how many players on this team have great numbers in them at this point, but a return to even a baseline level of competency across the board should elevate everyone.

Is that enough to turn them into a team that can…uh…actually take the lead in games? It’s hard to be confident in that right now. But I do think they’ll be improved. It couldn’t be worse.