Chart Party: 2025 Atlanta United is historically not good at soccer

we brought cake oh god oh no the cake is on fire

Atlanta United plays the least consequential match in club history tonight. The stakes have never been lower. Neither Atlanta nor Atlas have a got dang thing to play for after both sides lost their first two Leagues Cup matches. So, yeah, the preview is: Nothing matters, eat at Arby’s, tune in to see Jayden Hibbert (hopefully), Luke Brennan (hopefully) and other supplemental roster guys try and prove that they deserve more minutes.

All that considered, today is a good day to wallow. The Five Stripes aren’t bowl-eligible, the Atlanta Area Baseball Team fell off a cliff, and we’re still a few weeks away from European association football and American gridiron football. Ease into the wallowing like a warm bath; there’s never been a better time.

To help you along, let’s put into context exactly how bad this version of Atlanta United is. The TL;DR here is: Think of a statistical category. This year’s team is probably last or pretty close to last among every other Atlanta United team.

We’ve brought some charts for you. Let’s play a depressing “Where’s Waldo” game with the 2025 side (with a special bonus round of “2020 was weird, huh?”).

Having fun yet?

We can go a step further by looking at the team’s spend relative to the league and to other Atlanta United seasons. Ya know, if you want to have more fun.

Keep in mind, this is largely a reflection of DP spend by team. But, still, that’s a lot of money to throw down to get these kinds of results. Per Spotrac, 2025 is just the second time in club history Atlanta has ranked in the top three in total salary.

Neat, huh?

Anyway, we’ll close with something a little more subjective. That doesn’t make it any less of a bummer, though.

From my view, this team has been healthier than any recent Atlanta United team. Longtime readers will know about the 9+2 principle. Basically, the idea is that your results start to diminish once you have more than two starting-caliber players out of the lineup. Your definition of “starting-caliber” may vary, but I do my best to keep track of Atlanta’s lineups and their 9+2 status based on players who are clear starters and rotation guys who play at a starting-caliber level.

In my opinion, 2025 Atlanta United has had a 9+2 lineup in over 50% of its matches this year. That’s its best mark in a while. (Admittedly, I didn’t go back and check 2020 and 2021 in particular, but, c’mon, I only have so much free time.) It’s not quite the first three years, where a deep roster and less fixture congestion surely helped keep starting-caliber guys out there. But it’s still noticeable.

So. Yeah.

yeah.