Thank you for joining me for another NCAA Men’s College Soccer season preview, taking a deep dive into some of the academy’s graduates and former prospects as they continue to pursue their passion for soccer at the collegiate level. Over the last five years at DirtySouthSoccer before the transition to Scarves and Spikes, we explored the remarkable oddity that is American men’s college soccer with its countdown clock, basketball-style substitutions, and decades-old storylines that have outlasted every professional league in our country.
The 2024 season will see some big changes coming to how the game is played and to the competitive landscape with the PAC-12 Conference scattered to the wind mostly to the benefit of the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Big Ten Conference. Many of the rule changes are part of a multi-year effort by college soccer to bring the Division-I game into closer alignment with the professional game, better preparing their student athletes for opportunities with MLS NEXT PRO, USL, and overseas.
The most significant change involves substitutions. Teams are now limited to just 6 opportunities to substitute players per match during stoppages of play with any player removed from the match unable to return in either half. For Division-II and below, substitution rules remain the same, “where players can reenter the game once in the second half and can substitute only on goal kicks, their own team’s throw-in, their own team’s corner kick, after a goal has been scored or when a player has received a caution.”
Since the game clock will continue to count down to a final buzzer, substitutions within the final fifteen minutes of the second half or during overtime in a tied game or by the team that is leading will require a clock stoppage until the substitution is complete.
The other two significant rule changes include a golden-goal overtime rule for post-season soccer and an expanded video review for cards, penalties, and off-sides calls.
Now, with the technical updates out of the way, we return to the sport, the storylines, and the compelling Atlanta United prospects hoping to hear their name called at the 2025 MLS SuperDraft. (SuperDraft rules also changed last season but we’ve spend too much time on this sort of stuff so if you care, check this out.)
Defenders
Last year, we made a few predictions that we got right as Obi-wan Kenobi would say, “From a certain point of view.” The first prediction was about Garrison Tubbs.
“For fans most interested in future Homegrown signings, the most important senior to watch is Wake Forest centerback Garrison Tubbs.”
Tubbs did briefly sign with Atlanta United before having his Homegrown Player rights traded to DC United for $125,000 GAM and a sell-on percentage.
The next prediction has already started to come true but a little ahead of schedule.
“Atlanta United could potentially sign a defensive Homegrown player from college every year for the next three seasons with the University of North Carolina’s Matthew Edwards making a strong case to return in 2025, and Virginia Tech’s Grant Howard impressing after breaking out with the 2s last summer. Fans should also keep an eye on Northwestern’s uber-athletic centerback Nigel Prince.”
Matthew Edwards signed with Atlanta United 2 last winter and played well enough to earn a mid-season promotion with a Homegrown Player contract through 2027.
Grant Howard enters his Junior season with the University of Virginia, a stronger program than Virginia Tech with a better chance of seeing him develop into a pro-ready player either this winter or following his senior season. Atlanta United would be wise to offer him some kind of guarantee this winter with the new SuperDraft rules making him a compelling target for other MLS teams to draft and stash. Howard is a big and strong defender capable of playing at right-back or right centerback. He looked fantastic in his brief time with Atlanta United 2 before leaving for Virginia Tech. Like Edwards, he could return on a 2s contract this winter on a short “prove-it” MLS NEXT PRO deal.
Photo by: Joshua Sukoff/Northwestern Athletics
Nigel Prince still feels like a lock to add to an already deep group of athletic centerbacks. These three years in college have been good for him. In his lone appearances for the 2s, he looked raw, immensely athletically gifted but a bit chaotic in how he used his many tools. He has transformed into an all-around defender and leader at the back of Northwestern University’s side, playing 1,524 of a possible 1,530 minutes in 2023 in his second year as a starter. The 2023 First Team All-Big Ten Conference honoree and 2023 Second Team All-North Region distinction from the United Soccer Coaches has already received accolades heading in to the 2024 season as one of just 16 defenders nationwide recognized by United Soccer Coaches to their Men’s Players to Watch List. You can never have too many athletic and talented young defenders with good size on your club, so Nigel Prince feels like exactly the kind of player I would want to see return to Atlanta and build out the central defense alongside Noah Cobb and Efrain Morales.
On a recent livestream of the Scarves & Spikes network, Jason Longshore made a compelling case for one of our favorite underclassmen, Remi Okunlola. The freshman fullback from Lawrenceville, Georgia arrived at training camp in Clemson ready to compete for meaningful minutes on day one. Showing his versatility to play either fullback position, Okunlola scored two goals and added four assists across 16 matches, starting four for the ACC Tournament Champion and National Champion Clemson Tigers. He became the second Atlanta United left-back to win a National Championship at Clemson, following in the footsteps of Charlie Asensio who won alongside James Brighton in 2021.
Okunlola primarily played at right-back with Atlanta’s academy and could bring some much-needed attacking depth at both fullback positions for an MLS side that is looking thin after the sale of Caleb Wiley. If Okunlola wins a starting spot outright this season and helps take Clemson on another strong run, he could be on his way back down I-85 to his childhood club.
Okunlola’s former academy teammate Matthieu Brick had a comparatively quiet freshman campaign. The left-back had featured for Atlanta United 2 and the U-19s prior to beginning his college career. With a strong upperclassman defensive group already established at Clemson, there weren’t any opportunities for Brick to break through so he will be looking to make his debut for Clemson in the 2024 season. Brick is a talented defender who is generally pretty solid. He doesn’t flash in the same way Okunlola, Wiley, or Dominick Chong Qui do at the same position but he routinely found his way in to the team’s defense as a reliable option. Standing at just 5’8″, he does not have a physically commanding presence so he uses positioning, movement, and a strong ability to read the game as a way to compete with larger and faster wings.
Another underclassman who impressed in his 2023 freshman season was the University of Kentucky’s Joel Gonzalez. The 6’1″ centerback played nearly every match, starting 17 of the 19 matches he featured in for a total of 1442 minutes. This was a stingy defense that only allowed 23 goals in 20 matches and looks set to improve with Gonzalez returning in front of Atlanta United’s 3rd round pick Casper Mols in goal. Like many of his former academy teammates, Gonzalez continued his development this summer with USL League Two side Lionsbridge FC where he added another 696 of experience across 10 matches (8 starts). Similarly to Matthew Edwards, Nigel Prince, Garrison Tubbs, and some of our other standout defensive prospects, I suspect Atlanta will be keeping a close eye on him this Fall with plans for him to return in 2026 or 2027. I expect that he will take a big jump with more command of the defensive unit, more comfort with the ball at his feet, and a greater confidence to read the movement of the game in front of him.
Georgia Southern’s AJ Pama also had an impressive freshman campaign, starting 14 of 17 matches for a total of 1333 minutes. The Marietta High School alumni previously played for Atlanta United’s U-19s before taking his talents to Statesboro, Georgia. There, he began rekindling Atlanta United’s presence which had largely dwindled over the last few seasons. This was not a good Georgia Southern team, but it did show some improvements over what has been a rough run since 2019. In 2024, Pama, along with a collection of former Atlanta-area and English academy players will hope to bring GSU back to their winning ways.
Our last featured defender this year will be former Georgia State centerback Evan Schroeder. Schroeder earned a spot with Atlanta United as a trialist and has continued to work to elevate his game above where he would otherwise be type-cast. Like Pama and Gonzalez, he has good size at 6’1″ and has the overall blue-collar defender make-up that you like to see. After playing his first two seasons at Georgia State, Schroeder has made a big jump in competition to the ACC at Virginia Tech. While Tech may not be one of the premier programs in the ACC, he will get the biggest tests of his young career every week against players from the University of Virginia, Wake Forest, North Carolina, and now Stanford and Cal. If he can hold his own in his Junior season and be the veteran leader Tech will need in 2025, Schroeder could work his way on to a few draft boards or into his first contract with a USL Championship side by 2026.
Goalkeepers
Atlanta United’s strength at this position comes in this year’s freshman class. The club graduated three superb prospects from its U-19s who could all be playing professional soccer at a high level in the future.
Owen Barnett begins his college career at Wake Forest, a program known well to many Atlanta United fans. Coach Bobby Muuss runs a great team that regularly develops and produces high-quality pro-ready talent. One position that has greatly improved at Wake Forest of Muuss’s tenure is goalkeeper. The current lock at that position is Trace Alphin, the senior keeper who has made that net his own for several years. With the culmination of his storied career comes a new opportunity for Barnett and his new rival Jonah Mednard to compete. Mednard is a superb player with youth international experience with Haiti, a trial with Paris Saint-Germain, and a long list of honors from NYCFC’s academy. Barnett is used the competition. Surrounded by high-quality young keepers like Vicente Reyes, Kyle Jansen, Nash Skoglund, Jonathan Ransom, and James Donaldson, he knows what it is like to push himself to earn minutes and demand the same kind of recognition higher-profile teammates may be getting. He certainly did that with the U-19s this past season.
Meanwhile in the frozen North at Syracuse, Kyle Jansen enters a similar competition to inherit senior goalkeeper Jason Smith’s net from Toronto FC Academy product Jaheim Wickham. Like Wake Forest, this is a prestigious and competitive college program regularly in the hunt for trophies and regularly sending its players to the professional ranks. This is the school that produced Miles Robinson. Former Atlanta United academy goalkeeper Russell Shealy heroically led Syracuse to their last National Championship through multiple penalty shootouts in 2022, winning the full treble of National Championship, ACC Tournament Championship, and ACC Regular Season Champion. With up to four years ahead of him and years of experience training with the 2s and the U-17 South African National Team, Jansen could help Syracuse return to glory.
Of this trio of freshman, Nash Skoglund may have the most direct route to starting minutes at Tony Annan’s University of South Carolina. There is a redshirt senior and a freshman rival but neither are established starters. Based purely on size and pedigree, Skoglund’s freshman rival may have a leg up on them but Skoglund has the tools, mentality, and edge that could allow for him to claim the starting spot midseason and never look back. It also helps that his new coach is his old academy director.
That wraps up the first half of our 2024 college soccer preview. We will be back soon with a look at an exciting mix of midfield and forward prospects. In the meantime, let us know which of these players you are looking forward to watching this Fall and who you think may have the best chance of starting his professional career back in Atlanta.
[…] In our preview last year I wrote: “You can never have too many athletic and talented young defenders with good size on your club, so Nigel Prince feels like exactly the kind of player I would want to see return to Atlanta and build out the central defense alongside Noah Cobb and Efrain Morales.” […]
[…] professional this winter is Northwestern University’s defensive leader, Nigel Prince. In our season preview of defenders and goalkeepers, we discussed how the highly athletic Prince could be a welcomed addition to Atlanta’s young […]
[…] Atlanta United college soccer preview: Defenders and goalkeepers […]
great write up as always!
if we were a college, i would be calling cbu at this point. we really seem to have a knack when it comes to young, athletic cb’s.
when it comes to keepers however, i continue to shake my head. we have had so many promising young keepers thru the organization, and not one of them has seemingly developed enough to get a real first team look. in your opinion, is that poor talent scouting on our part, or an inability to develop talent, or something else entirely?
Thanks!
That’s a great nuanced question that deserves a nuanced answer. Developing goalkeepers is a very challenging task that is beholden to more than just the individual talent of the players. From what I’ve seen, we have fantastic goalkeeping coaches working for this club. The issue is that we have not had adequate opportunities for players to rise to the first team with a clear path to meaningful minutes. Having established starters like Guzan locks up a positive with a finite amount of playing time behind him (when things are going well). Vicente Reyes saw Guzan and multiple established veteran keepers above him in the depth chart and did not see his career progressing at the speed he needed to reach his developmental goals. There is also a mindset that is pretty widespread in the soccer world that keepers develop later than other players so many teams don’t feel rushed to run their young talent out at the same urgency as field players.
I am very excited about Hibbert and believe that he will be our starter by the second half of 2025. He should be in open competition with Ransom, Donaldson, and any other young keepers who will be returning from college in the coming years. We will still lose great players because that is the nature of the beast.
So to answer your question, timing and senior player depth/stability may have been the main issues blocking younger players in the past. With Guzan closing in on the end of his career and Cohen only under contract for a short time, the door looks open for youngsters to prove what they can do. Young keepers would theoretically turn over more often than older keepers since they would be moving overseas as a step up in their careers so that leaves room open for a keeper pipeline if the talent depth is there.
thanks for the context. that makes a lot of sense, and i will share your optimism about hibbert. while serviceable, cohen is clearly not the keeper of the future, and i would love for hibbert (or another academy prospect) to be that.
agreed about keepers developing later (generally), but i have also seen a lot more youth being handed the keys, both here and abroad. i think that’s probably a testament to better club and academy level coaches. whereas in the past, it was “easier” to develop field players, and therefore their game matured faster, keepers had to kind of wait until they were at a higher level before really getting the training they needed. thoughts?
That could certainly be part of it.
Patrick Schulte is one of the guys that gets talked about a lot. He played three years of college ball before signing a Generation Adidas deal ahead of the 2022 SuperDraft. It took a bit of luck for him to earn the starting role he has now since Eloy Room had visa issues and then missed another match later in March so Schulte could show what he could do. That led to him starting the 2023 MLS Cup.
For Slonina and Brady in Chicago, that is a matter of the youngster(s) signing their pro contracts at 14 years old in 2019 and then Slonina beating older less-established keepers in 2021 (Bobby Shuttleworth). When Slonina left, Brady stepped in and never let go.
Petrovic is another example. He signed a three-year deal with New England when he was 20 and earned the starting spot there before being sold to Chelsea a year and a half later.
Those are three different models for young players getting into the starting mix, but they all take a degree of timing and luck with a club that is ready for a young keeper instead of invested in an established veteran leader like Guzan.
Vicente Reyes could have gone the Slonina/Brady route but he had done about everything he could do with the 2s and needed a clear shot at starting for the MLS side, which was not possible without a Homegrown Player contract. When he left, Brad was going to be around for at least another season, the club signed two older keepers around Brad and were starting to talk about Josh Cohen. Things didn’t look great for Reyes’ prospects so he did the right thing for himself.
I think any of Barnett, Jansen, or Skoglund could return on a 2s contract in 3 years just as Ransom and Donaldson could sign this winter. But Hibbert is the clear succession plan at the moment with Cohen as Andrew Gutman keeping the spot warm for Wiley until he’s ready.