Atlanta and the pursuit of professional soccer

Long story short: Atlanta was awarded a Major League Soccer team.  They will become the 22nd team in Major League Soccer.

This is cool and all, and I’m all for Atlanta having more professional sports teams.  But I can’t help but feel mixed feelings about the whole end game as a whole, and question whether or not they’ll actually succeed.  If the end result is an embarrassing sell and relocate, like the old NHL Atlanta Thrashers, then honestly I’d rather this not come to fruition at all, because although many believe it’s better to try and fail than to not try at all, in this case I think it’s questionable to try, if there’s too much uphill struggle.

Simply put, I do believe there’s a massive uphill challenge of starting a Major League Soccer team in Atlanta.  Sure, Atlanta is a major market in the country and major markets should be represented in as many ways as possible, but this all goes back to the unfortunate circumstance that, Atlanta is a football town, first and foremost, full stop.

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