How Atlanta transformed itself into the new capital of American soccer as the World Cup edges closer

The eccentric rapper, actor and trendsetter Andre Benjamin – better known as Andre 3000 – once said, ‘The world’s a stage and everybody gots to play their part.’ Soon, the world will come to Atlanta’s doorstep and the city is more than ready to ‘play its part’ to welcome it.

The clock ticks ever closer to the 2026 World Cup. Atlanta will have a major role to play in that tournament as it hosts one of two semifinals of the world’s most beloved sporting event.

But Atlanta wasn’t chosen just because it’s a major city in the American South. As soccer grew across the United States, it was only a matter of time before it exploded in the ATL. Over the past decade, the ‘Big Peach’ has solidified itself as not only a hotbed of the sport, but the outright Capital of American Soccer.

Part of that is thanks to the success of its MLS franchise, Atlanta United. But it’s a moment the city has been capable of for years.

But now the soccer scene is not just growing, but thriving. It will culminate in this summer’s World Cup, but to know Atlanta’s soccer scene is to appreciate not only what it has done so far – but anticipate what will happen in the months and years to come.

Across five days in late March, the Daily Mail ventured south to speak to stakeholders and experts to discover how ‘A-Town’ took the mantle of the sport for itself.

To appreciate how much progress has been made, you have to understand the importance of sports in the American South – and where Atlanta fits in it all.

The American South is – first, and foremost – American football territory. Georgia Tech, located in Atlanta, and the University of Georgia, located in nearby Athens, each have four college national titles. In addition to the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons, Mercedes-Benz Stadium hosts the SEC Championship and Peach Bowl each year.

Outside football, the Atlanta Braves are the ‘Deep South’s’ only Major League Baseball team. Under the ownership of Ted Turner – the founder of CNN and the Turner Broadcasting System – Braves games were broadcast nationally beginning in 1977 and showed off the city to the country.

But for a while, soccer was never truly present in the region. Atlanta was once host to the Atlanta Chiefs in the first iteration of the North American Soccer League, but couldn’t make ‘The Beautiful Game’ stick.

All that changed in 2017, when Arthur Blank – the billionaire co-founder of The Home Depot – began to build a new stadium for his Atlanta Falcons NFL team.

‘They did a feasibility study and turns out, you know what, we do have a pretty highly motivated soccer community here in Atlanta,’ said Heather Sautter, Vice President of Corporate Communications for AMB Sports + Entertainment – the parent company of Atlanta United and the Falcons. ‘And he decided, let’s just do it.’

Around the time that Blank was working on the development of the now-named Mercedes-Benz Stadium, his son, Josh, was playing soccer in high school. 

Blank had previously considered pursuing an expansion franchise, but pulled out in the late-2000s. After discussions and adjustments to the plans for the stadium, MLS announced Atlanta United FC as an expansion team in 2014 – targeting a start of play in 2017. 

The building itself is one of the grandest sporting cathedrals you’d find anywhere in the world. At just under nine years old, the facility remains state-of-the-art and offers not only luxury (20% of all seats are ‘premium’) but also affordability in the form of the cheapest concession prices in the entire United States.

Stadium representatives say the building was designed so it could adapt to the game being played, saying that ‘when you’re here for a football game, it shouldn’t feel like a soccer stadium but when you’re here for a soccer game, it shouldn’t feel like a soccer stadium.’ 

Representatives from the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce note that in the history of the building, they’ve had more fans in total attending soccer matches than football games ‘and it will never go back.’

On Atlanta United gamedays, when the team is truly at its peak, it can achieve that singularity. The ‘Five Stripes’ sit 45th in the world for average matchday attendance – one spot behind Aston Villa and ahead of giants like Juventus and Chelsea.

To this day, Atlanta United still holds the record for the highest attended MLS title game when 73,019 packed in to watch the team win the 2018 MLS Cup Final.

The early success of the team captivated American soccer right out of the gate. The MLS Cup title was the first trophy won by an Atlanta pro sports team since the Braves won the 1995 World Series.

It’s thanks to that instant impact that has led to sustained support to this day. Even in the midst of the worst season in club history last season, when Atlanta United finished 14th out of 15 in the Eastern Conference, the team still averaged 43,992 fans per match – nearly 13,000 more than their next-closest rivals.

That number shows how truly well-supported soccer is in the Atlanta area – and why it’s being treated like the growth opportunity it should be.

‘The fans… the ones who come and they just want to support a winning team, they, they will, they will be there,’ Atlanta United sporting director Chris Henderson told the Daily Mail. ‘But there is a really strong foundation of a core group of fans that have followed this team’s ups and downs and I think more it’s just this connection with who the club is and who it is in this city.’

In addition to the local area residents in the most prosperous city in the American South, Atlanta is home to distinct communities of ex-pats from European countries like Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom – as well as from Mexico and Central America along with other growing soccer nations like South Korea.

‘It was important to bring the right infrastructure in at the time too, and do the groundwork of going into the soccer communities, getting to know them, understanding what they needed and what they wanted,’ said Sautter. ‘It was very much a grassroots effort to bring those folks along with us.’

With a growing appetite for the game, the city and Atlanta United itself are responding by expanding opportunities across the Peach State.

In the city, the local transportation service – MARTA – is working on its ‘StationSoccer’ program – building pitches in conjunction with a local non-profit. Five have already been built with another five in progress.

The MLS side is also working on a similar project, titled GA 100 – with the goal of building 100 soccer pitches across the state. 18 have been constructed so far, ranging from the city of Dalton in the north of the Georgia to Brunswick on the Atlantic coast.

Then, of course, there’s the two biggest examples of growth. First, there’s the new US Soccer headquarters: the $250million Arthur M. Blank US Soccer National Training Center.

The sprawling complex on 200-acres is located just 30 minutes south of the city center and features 17 outdoor playing surfaces, 200,000 square feet of indoor space and is able to host all 23 national teams that the US Soccer Federation (USSF) fields.

With a ribbon cutting set for early May, officials in the USSF made it clear that suburban Atlanta was the clear choice to set up a base for the future.

‘One of the key things is you need to be able to play soccer year-round,’ USSF CEO JT Batson told Daily Mail. ‘That eliminates a chunk of the country. And then, of course, you need to be next to a major airport… Once we decided Atlanta was the right home, we look all around and we definitely found that here.’

Lastly, but not least, there’s the NWSL franchise Atlanta has been awarded which will begin play in 2028.

While the team has not been named yet, there is belief that once things get off and running, the side can be competitive right away.

‘Knowing that we will be an expansion team, there’ll be be more [patience], but I think it really goes back to what do we want to be and represent?’ said Josh Blank, Arthur’s aforementioned son, who has taken a key role in developing the NWSL team.

Referencing Atlanta United, Black says ‘there were some growing pains, at times. But also it made the type of soccer incredibly exciting.’

He hopes to find a way and replicate that with the women’s team: ‘Hopefully that means we win a lot of games, but I think, ultimately we want to play an attractive style.’ 

With all of this background, it’s no wonder why Atlanta is the perfect site to host matches at the World Cup. Atlanta will hold eight matches – including games in the Round of 32, the Round of 16 and the semifinals.

Fans will find the trademark ‘Southern hospitality’ as well as a plethora of accommodations – with tens of thousands of hotel rooms within a 15 minute walk of Mercedes-Benz Stadium (which will be renamed for the World Cup).

It’s a city that’s grown to not just love the sport – but fully embrace it as a larger part of its identity.

Now, with the World Cup less than 70 days away, everyone in the ATL is preparing to welcome the globe to the city ‘where the players play.’