One of the more puzzling sagas in Atlanta United history has come to a close. Just before the end of the opening transfer window of the 2024 season, Atlanta United traded Derrick Etienne to Toronto FC for $375,000 GAM ($200k guaranteed) for the 2025 season. As part of the deal, Atlanta will retain a significant portion of Etienne’s cap hit in 2024 with that amount reduced in 2025.
“We want to thank Derrick for his time with the club and wish him the best of luck in his future,” Vice President and Technical Director Carlos Bocanegra said. “This is a mutually beneficial trade that provides us flexibility to potentially strengthen our roster in the summer, while giving Derrick a fresh start in Toronto.”
Etienne arrived in Atlanta with a lot of excitement surrounding his potential role as a slashing attacking in Coach Gonzalo Pineda’s system. That potential never materialized into results as he often looked lost on the field and was eventually buried down the depth chart behind new arrivals Xande Silva and Saba Lobjanidze along with younger wide attackers like Tyler Wolff and Edwin Mosquera.
The club attempted to find a role for Etienne during the 2024 preseason and the early fixtures, playing him at the 10, as a wide midfielder, and even as a striker, but none of those roles looked particularly convincing. Now, with his role on the Haitian National Team on the line, Etienne can have a fresh start to compete for valuable playing time while not blocking any of Atlanta United’s rising prospects with the 2s.
Overall, this seems like the resolution that the team and the player needed.
Tell us what you think in the comments below.
Btw, guys I think this website is beginning to gather momentum. I was worried at the beginning with so few comments, but I feel better now…
Tweet from Doug tonight says coaches are “starting to do intensive film review. ” with players. wtf?? What have they normally been doing after these games? Just shrug shoulders and do a rondo?
c’mon dude…it’s all just about effort.
“starting to do intensive reviews” After 3 years? maybe they just had popcorn and evening at the movies before?
$200 guaranteed? Toronto overpaid. :0)
Good luck to him, for whatever reason he just didn’t fit here.
I love when typos tell a story
To be honest, I had forgotten he was even still on the team
So had Pineda, but that’s not a criticism.
Ouch
Good riddance. Worst signing in AUFC history.
jurgen damm slowly slinks to the back of the room…after cashing his million dollar checks
He just picked up a knock while slinking and will be out for several weeks.
Luckily we did not have to buy him out. Terrible acquisition; hope Boca’s influence on acquiring players disappears. Was this before Garthway arrival?
I believe Eitienne was the last acquisition pre-Garth. Someone verify or correct pls.
Incorrect. Garth was here BUT the analytics team was not in place, so he was the last acquisition made BEFORE they started helping. The Athletic reported that Garth stayed out of the decision to sign him.
I also strongly disagree that it was lucky that we didn’t have to buy him out. It was stupid to not admit that signing him was a mistake and buy him out and move on and counting on another team, in this case Toronto, to be even stupider than you are and bail you out is also stupid. However, in this case doing the wrong thing somehow paid off, so weak hurray cheer from me on that.
Technically, yes, Lagerway was here. Lagerway was announced on 11/22/2022, and Etienne was signed on 11/30/2022. I’d guess the talks with Etienne had started far in advance of that and Lagerway just it progress. Pretty much every move made after that has been a good one. Ether clearing out bad contracts/bad players or adding good ones.
Just my opinion, but it seems like every signing that Boca did did not pan out and we spent quite a bit money. Maybe Almada has been the only one that worked?
I’d also throw Lopez in there. His contract has proven to be the most problematic and immoveable of anyone we’ve signed. Damm was atrocious, though, and this Etienne contract was awful, too.
JJ Williams wants you to hold all his beers.
Eh, we payed like a bag of peanuts for JJ Williams. Also I have to give him props for playing 3 whole minutes and getting sent off.
Idk how many people agree or disagree with me, but while we’re on the topic:
1-Barco
2-Lopez
2-Damm
…
-Araujo? Considering he took a DP slot. He would have been ok at a TAM contract, but not for 7m a year.
Honestly, considering he was barely a TAM signing at all, I don’t think Etienne was *that* bad. Yes, he flopped awfully; but he wasn’t a big flashy signing that we built the team on, so the consequences aren’t that bad.
If we’re ranking worst signings relative to expectations, I think it’s fair to rank Etienne as the worst. He had 8g/6a at Columbus the year before (his only good year btw..). And then he had a whopping 0g/1a in over 1000 minutes here. And it’s not just the stats, it’s the eye test too. On the field he looks lost and slow.
Damm would be another strong contender for worst signing, both because of cost and (lack of) production. But at least he had 4 assists in under 800 minutes.. But holy hell was he overpaid.
Barco had legitimate moments where he excelled and even led on this team. He never lived up to expectations, but then again, the expectations were sky high.. Araujo was definitely not a good signing, but at least he had moments and you always felt he could, maybe, possibly, theoretically change the game in an instant.
And Lopez was also not a good signing, but his signing was a mess from the very beginning. Expectations for him (as I remember) weren’t high because no one knew who the hell he was or even if he was on our team for a while.
Other notables: Jahn, Cubo, Rossetto
Anyway,
1-Etienne
1-Damm
2-Lopez
3-?
Yeah I can respect the difference of opinions on this for sure, but my take is that Barco was overpriced, overpaid, not a key piece of team at any time that we were good, didn’t play well with others, helped drive off a future USMNT striker the season before we needed a 2nd striker more than ever, played hero ball without ever being a hero, occupied a DP slot for 4 years, evidently was hurting our xAM budget a year after he was gone, and ultimately contributed nothing meaningful beyond playing well in the short term for his last ~8 months here.
Also, Jahn gets a pass imo because realistically he was a USL striker coming in to fill Josef’s spot. And he scored on Orlando sooo… that was the highlight of 2020 for me lol
Now this went through and I got an email “your comment was approved”… weird
Jahn had that tie-ing goal in an Orlando game. Cubo had that one game where he held the ball in the corner against Columbus.
Damm… bought a fancy car?
I mentioned that Jahn moment (along with the fact that he was a USL striker trying to replace Josef) as reasons I don’t think he was a bad signing in another comment that evidently didn’t go through.
Summary: I can respect opinions on this, but my personal take is that Barco was overpaid, overhyped, never gelled with teammates, was a ball hog, couldn’t beat anyone on the dribble despite trying 90% of the time, helped run off Vasquez right before we needed a striker the most, occupied a DP slot for 4 years, never meaningfully contributed outside of his last ~8 months here, and hurt our budget for a year after he was gone. So he wasn’t the *worst* player in terms of on-field (though I think he doesnt fit on a good team), but he was the worst signing imo for those reasons
I can agree to that view. I personally have no strong opinion on this one way or another. I just want to be done with the plethora of bad signings and for the team to be a force again.
I’m very happy with our signings since Lagerway came in. I hope we still get the Josefs, Almadas, and Almirons of the world; but I’ll take some good-not-insane players at a lower failure rate.
Wasn’t Tata quoted as saying “I wouldn’t pay that much for an unproven teenager”?
Don’t remember that. But my memory says that big Felipe article had Tata not wanting the signing and preferring if we kept Asad.
Etienne was a terrible signing on that contract, so getting even a little cap relief and freeing up that roster spot is a win at this point.
Sucks he’ll still count against the cap.. why not just use the buyout and free up the cap space?
It makes me wonder if there is someone who could be on the potential buyout chopping block, at least when folks start to get healthy.
Not sure if there are any obvious candidates though. So maybe its just the club trying to protect its reputation by moving players along instead of just cutting them.
I think they are creating flexibility in case one of our U-22s out on loan is not purchased by his current South American club. This is a move to set up at least one other move this summer.
At this point, our buy-out has been Lopez. Not sure when the second buy-out is an option. Or if that second buy-out officially been approved yet.
We didn’t buyout Lopez; we mutually agreed to terminate his contract 6 months early by letting him go pursue other opportunities while we continued to pay him for the 2nd half of 2023 if I remember right
Woohoo! We get some value and preserve our second buyout. Thank you Toronto and good luck Etienne!
I wish the best for him. It just never clicked for him here. From what we have seen, he’s a good teammate and could do well with a change of system and scenery.
yeah…i can’t fault the fo for this one. on paper, it seemed like a pretty good signing, if a bit over-paid. and maybe with a better coach it would have been different…who knows. but he definitely under-performed and needed to move on.
The contract is an interesting one. While he was in allocation money territory for the first couple of years of his deal, the average will dip under the allocation money threshold next year as the maximum salary threshold continues to rise. If he can perform for Toronto, he will look like an incredible deal for them by the end of his contract.
But will he? Nothing he showed implies differently. He has 1 decent year on his resume. The remainder of the sample set is spectacularly poor. The perplexing part was the contract amount. He makes half of that and it is reasonable to take a swing. At >$600K… nowhere close to being the right choice.
That’s up to him and Toronto now. The only stake we have left is the $175k GAM in performance accelerators next year.