Tag: soccer

When a reporter in 2003 told Atlanta Beat coach Tom Stone that young girls in the metro area were crying because the team was shutting down, his was a caustic response. “If more of those girls’ parents had brought them to our games,” he said, “they wouldn’t be crying today.”

With funding from Atlanta United FC (by way of the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation), nonprofit Soccer in the Streets unveiled the first pitch built at an urban transit station. Sanjay Patel, the creator of Station Soccer, hopes to build nine more and create a league.

Soccer, Fugees Academy founder Luma Mufleh says, “defines the shape of our academy. Being involved in sports, playing on a team—that crashes all barriers, including language. In some ways, it is magical. Whether they’re good or not is irrelevant."

I could easily say that, with sports, my parents’ model of loving detachment was good enough for me, so it’s good enough for my kid. But I can’t deny there’s a system in place that measures a parent’s love for her child by how often that parent shows up. The kids didn’t create this system. We did.

Neither Rain, nor sleet, nor early morning kickoff can keep Atlanta’s rabid soccer fans from cheering on their favorite teams. Here, fans of Manchester United—at Fadó Irish Pub in Midtown—talk about why they show up.

Whether sporty and classic or bold and bright, stripes dominate menswear this spring. It’s fitting then that Atlanta United FC kicks off its first season March 5 in a signature striped kit. Here, four team members show off the iconic pattern.

Atlanta is a sports town, just not a unified one. I know passionate fans of the Braves and Bulldogs, but also Lakers lovers, Phillies fanatics, Alabama die-hards, and Chelsea hooligans. Atlantans come from all over and bring their exotic sporting allegiances with them.

A group of Atlanta investors is in talks to bring professional soccer to the metro area. And they’re not talking about the Atlanta United FC.

Who says Atlanta doesn’t have enthusiastic sports fans? Atlanta United FC, the city’s new major league soccer team, sold record numbers of its new kit last night.

One would think that having former Georgia Attorney General Mike Bowers literally waiting in the wings to tell the DeKalb County Commission how riddled with corruption its county is—“rotten to the core” is how he put it in a letter this week to the county—might engender a sense of fiscal restraint in the board.