Soccer, like all sports, has a significant amount of unpredictability. Steven Gerrard, one of the best midfielders of his time, unexpectedly slips and Liverpool miss out on a Premier League title. After going down 3-0 to FC Barcelona in the away leg of the 2019 Champions League Semi-final, Liverpool beat 66-1 odds and pulled off a miracle on a memorable night for Reds fans.
The math often doesn’t math when it comes to sports, but we’ll try to make it work anyway.
Using a combination of relevant factors and my subjective opinion about the state of some of the teams around the league, I devised a formula to come up with an estimate for how difficult Atlanta United’s schedule will be in 2024.
Let me preface this by saying that these are not predictions of the results for these games, these are merely ratings that suggest how challenging each game will be.
Before we get into the actual ratings, I’ll go over some of the numbers going into this. Each overall rating is a weighted average of four components:
Opponent Difficulty Rating (65%)
A 1-5 rating for how good I expect each of Atlanta United’s opponents to be this season based on last season’s form and the expected impact of transfers made during the offseason. A higher rating means a more difficult opponent. These are mostly based off of my predictions for the 2024 MLS season, which I posted on Twitter/X.
Absence Rating (10%)
This accounts for any impactful absences the Five Stripes will have for that particular game. For the time being, those ratings mainly revolve around planned absences for international duty. A higher rating stands for a higher number of absences and/or more critical (eg: starting XI, DPs, etc.) absences. The lowest possible rating is one.
Travel Rating (10%)
This looks at how far from home Atlanta United will have to travel to play its games this season. The further the trip, the higher this rating will be. Home games automatically get a rating of one.
Fixture Congestion Rating (15%)
This measures the volume of matches the Five Stripes plays in the lead-up to a particular game. No games within eight days prior results in a rating of one, one game gets a rating of two and two games earns a rating of four. Since we don’t have a schedule for Leagues Cup or Open Cup yet, these exclusively reflect MLS games for now.
Once those components are put together, we’ll get an overall rating between one and five for a fixture’s difficulty. Here’s what each rating represents:
1 – Easy: Atlanta United is the clear favorite to win.
2 – Moderate: A more even match, but Atlanta is still the favorite.
3 – Even Match: Very balanced match; hard to pick a favorite.
4 – Difficult: A challenging game for Atlanta; the opponent is favored to win.
5 – Extremely Difficult: The opponent is the clear favorite to win.
With that out of the way, here are the difficulty ratings for each Atlanta United MLS match in 2024:
| Match | Opponent Difficulty Rating | Absence Rating | Travel Rating | Fixture Congestion Rating | Overall Fixture Difficulty Rating (1-5) |
| 2/24 at Columbus Crew | 5 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 4.05 |
| 3/9 vs New England Revolution | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3.05 |
| 3/17 vs Orlando City SC | 5 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3.75 |
| 3/23 at Toronto FC | 1 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 1.85 |
| 3/31 vs Chicago Fire | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2.45 |
| 4/6 at New York City FC | 1 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 1.75 |
| 4/14 vs Philadelphia Union | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3.1 |
| 4/20 vs FC Cincinnati | 5 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3.75 |
| 4/27 at Chicago Fire | 3 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 2.65 |
| 5/4 vs Minnesota United | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1.15 |
| 5/11 vs DC United | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1.8 |
| 5/15 at FC Cincinnati | 5 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 3.95 |
| 5/18 at Nashville SC | 3 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 2.85 |
| 5/25 vs Los Angeles FC | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3.1 |
| 5/29 at Inter Miami CF | 4 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 3.3 |
| 6/2 vs Charlotte FC | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 1.45 |
| 6/15 vs Houston Dynamo | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 3.25 |
| 6/19 at DC United | 2 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 2.3 |
| 6/22 at St. Louis CITY | 3 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 3.35 |
| 6/29 vs Toronto FC | 1 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 1.55 |
| 7/3 at New England Revolution | 4 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 3.8 |
| 7/6 at Real Salt Lake | 3 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 3.55 |
| 7/13 at CF Montreal | 2 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 2.6 |
| 7/17 vs New York City FC | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1.15 |
| 7/20 vs Columbus Crew | 5 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 4.05 |
| 8/24 at Los Angeles Galaxy | 4 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 3.35 |
| 8/31 at Charlotte FC | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1.25 |
| 9/14 vs Nashville SC | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2.3 |
| 9/18 vs Inter Miami CF | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3.1 |
| 9/21 at New York Red Bulls | 2 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 2.4 |
| 9/28 at Philadelphia Union | 4 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 3.7 |
| 10/2 vs CF Montreal | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1.8 |
| 10/5 vs New York Red Bulls | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 2.1 |
| 10/19 at Orlando City SC | 5 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 3.8 |
Got through all of those boxes and numbers? Good. Now let’s talk about some notable tidbits from these ratings.
Hardest Games
With ratings of 4.05, both of the games against reigning champs Columbus take the cake as the hardest games. Starting the season against the Crew at Lower.com Field is a serious challenge. This Atlanta side will be coming into the game hungry for all three points and with a palpable chip on its shoulder after a bitter elimination from the playoffs in that same stadium just a few months ago.
And while Atlanta United has made its home a fortress, Columbus is a side that can get a result on the road. Last year’s regular season game between these two at Mercedes-Benz Stadium ended in a 1-1 draw after an evenly-fought match. Furthermore, Atlanta will be coming into this game after playing two games in the previous week.
After those two matches, road games against FC Cincinnati (3.95), New England Revolution (3.8) and Orlando City (3.8) closely follow as some of the more challenging matchups on the Five Stripes’ calendar.
Easiest Matches
Two home games against Minnesota United and New York City FC are tied with the lowest rating of 1.15. Neither of these two teams has greatly impressed with their offseasons with many questions surrounding their abilities to compete. Will Strahinja Tanasijević be the right man for NYCFC’s backline? Where will the goals come from? Can the Loons be a competitive team without its head coach interim head coach?
Other lower-rated matchups include home and away games against Charlotte FC (1.45 and 1.25, respectively) who decided to move their best Designated Player and rely solely on Enzo Copetti, which wouldn’t be a terrible idea if they had any decent chance-creators.
Tough Midseason
The great news for all of us soccer fans is that 2024 will have a lot of soccer. The bad news for those who follow Atlanta United is that 2024 will have a lot of soccer. Two big international tournaments will be taking place from mid-June to mid-July: The UEFA Euros in Germany and the Copa America in the USA.
This means that Atlanta United could be missing the following for up to seven games that overlap with the tournaments:
- Giorgos Giakoumakis – Greece (if they qualify)
- Saba Lobjanidze – Georgia (if they qualify)
- Luis Abram – Peru
- Ronald Hernandez – Venezuela
That’s three starters including two DP attackers that the Five Stripes might have to do without.
The average difficulty rating of Atlanta’s middle third of the season (5/15-7/13) is 2.9, with its hardest games during this stretch being away to Cincinnati (3.95), away to New England (3.8), and away to Real Salt Lake (3.55).
What do you think of these ratings? Which matches do you think should be rated higher or lower? Let us know in the comments and be sure to tune into Thursday’s episode of the show at 7pm!
Games you rated lower than 2 that should be definite wins: 9 for 27 points
Games you rated higher than 3.7 that are probably losses: 8
That accounts for 1/2 of our games. If we average 2 points/game for the other 17 games (34 total points), our total for the regular season will be 61 points. That would have put us 3rd in the East in 2023.
We need MORE!
I hadn’t done the math on the points, but it sounds about right. I had predicted ATL UTD would finish 3rd in the East this season.
This is some legit analysis, Henry. Nicely done. My main takeaway, though, is that this is the year that I feel like I’m finally entering international-level fandom as my first thought was “I freaking hate international games” and my second thought was “damn – I never understood when English people used to say that at the Brewhouse on Sunday morning.”
It just ruins all the momentum…but hey, the Brewhouse on a Sunday morning is a good time
Thanks! International breaks are fun… when you’re club isn’t playing through them and missing several starters 😅
Great article!
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it 😄