OPINION: Atlanta United should buy out Miguel Almiron’s contract

What can Atlanta United win during the next 18 months of the Paraguayan’s contract? If the answer is nothing, then moving on now is the first step on the path to improvement.

When Miguel Almiron walked through a set of doors at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in January of 2025, none of the hundreds of fans waiting for him in the lobby could’ve imagined his second stint in Atlanta would be as disappointing as it has turned out.

In his first season back, Atlanta United endured its worst campaign in club history, finishing just two points off the bottom of the table. To be clear, no single player is responsible for that kind of failure in MLS. It takes a village.

But Almiron’s form certainly didn’t help. Led by then-president Garth Lagerwey, the club splashed a reported eight-figure transfer fee to bring him back and made him one of the league’s top-five highest-paid players. For a player who was nearly 31 at the time, the move was so drastic that some fans, rightly or wrongly, saw it more as a marketing play than a purely soccer decision.

Eighteen months later, any fan who said as much is probably feeling vindicated. Through his 39 games played since his return, he’s scored only six goals, half of which came from the penalty spot. This year, he hasn’t scored at all and provided three assists, all of which came in a single match.

The 2026 season has seen the situation progress from frustrating to uncomfortable. Awkward. The team has only won one game in which he’s started in all competitions. That’s not proof the team is better without him. Almiron remains a player with a resume that theoretically suggests he’d improve a struggling MLS team.

But I’m not holding my breath for a sudden turnaround here, either. Not to this team. Not from a 32-year-old who has produced so little to this point. Compared to other attacking midfielders and wingers in MLS this season, Almiron ranks in the 61st percentile in xG (and hasn’t scored), 55th percentile in xA, and 59th percentile in chances created. These are decent numbers for a homegrown or a rotation-type winger. These are terrible numbers for someone signed to, in theory, lead a good team in these offensive categories as one of its three Designated Players and the fifth-highest-paid player in MLS.

All of this, the statistics, the disappointment, the team dynamics, are why Atlanta United should end this experiment now in the form of one of the club’s two available buyouts.

“But why urge to buy out Almiron when almost the entire squad is underperforming to a man, and a player like Latte Lath has been a bigger disappointment with even less to show for his play? Other players deserve buying out more than Almiron” is a counterargument I often see to this idea (though one I see less and less as time marches on). But as Clint Eastwood and Snoop Pearson famously said, “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.”

When evaluating buyout candidates from this squad, we aren’t prioritizing the worst performers alone. We’re prioritizing the worst performers relative to their cost. In Almiron’s case, it is less about the cost of his nearly $8 million contract, and more about the fact that said contract occupies one of the precious Designated Player spots.

Ultimately, Almiron is going to make his money regardless. Atlanta is on the hook to pay him what he’s owed for the next 18 months. The only question is whether Atlanta wants to also pay the opportunity cost during those 18 months that prevents them from signing a different DP to replace the aging club legend.

And Almiron’s age is also a critical factor in why the buyout is specifically needed on him, and not on Latte Lath. I agree with anyone who says Latte Lath has been even more disappointing than Almiron. But at age 27 and on half the wages, there is (in my opinion) a way for Atlanta to move on from LL that wouldn’t require a buyout. Yes, it will require a bath on the transfer fee, and the mechanism might have strigns attached in the form of loan agreements, performance incentives, etc. But I think there’s a way, where there simply is not with Miggy.

To put the two players’ contracts in comparison for my Football Manager brethren or anyone else used to seeing contracts in the form of pound sterling per week: Latte Lath is a 27-year-old on ~£54,000 per week. Miguel Almiron is a 32-year-old on ~£112,000 per week. Almiron simply doesn’t have a market for his transfer under these conditions.

Do I expect it to happen? No, for several reasons. First, I frankly don’t think the club’s leadership has the guts. Using the buyout is an admission of their own failure in spending the ownership’s money wisely, the same ownership they’d ask to pay the cost of the mistake AND fund a new transfer.

Second, Tata Martino seems determined to make it work. While not stated on record, I can’t help but imagine Tata returned to Atlanta in part because of Almiron’s presence and his affection for him and wanting to help his career.

And Almiron is a key marketing figure for the club, and leaders beyond those crafting the roster might be concerned about the way fans would perceive the treatment as being unfair, undeserved, or crossing the loyalties of their paying customers, at least the ones they have left.

Atlanta United is in a bad way. Mistakes were made, and drastic measures are necessary to correct course. But with new club president Mauricio Culebro arriving this summer, now is the time to wipe as many of those mistakes from the board to clear the slate to the greatest extent possible.