Jay Fortune calls the Atlanta area home, but he was born in North Carolina — Raleigh, to be exact.
So it’s only fitting that his first MLS goal came in the state of his birth, a host of Atlanta United fans (and his parents) making the trip to Bank of America Stadium to see Atlanta take down Charlotte FC 1-0.
“Felt great. Long time coming,” Fortune said after the match. “I think I was starting to get a little bit of stick from a few guys because I haven’t scored some yet, but just kind of got the feeling it was coming a bit soon, and no better place than the home state.”
Fortune, in the starting XI as Tristan Muyumba recovers from a hip injury, made the most of his opportunity in the 55th minute. He took a pass from Xande Silva just past the midfield line, sped down the pitch while shrugging off a challenge from midfielder Brandt Bronico, and laced a right-footed shot past Charlotte goalkeeper Kristijan Kahlina for the night’s only goal.
“I was talking with Dax (McCarty) and he said, ‘You have the ability to drive past players and those two midfielders, (and) if you can catch them alongside them or in front of them, you’ll be able to drive by them’ and I was able to do that,” Fortune said.
“I had a couple options in the first half [where] I didn’t shoot, so I said ‘Go ahead, why not’ and thankfully it went in.”
“I think that he’s got a bright future,” interim head coach Rob Valentino said. “He’s been progressing very well, pushing the guys in front of him and he earned himself a nice goal tonight.”
Fortune likely will be back on the bench when Muyumba returns to the lineup, perhaps as soon as Atlanta’s next match on Sept. 14 against Nashville SC — its first home match since a loss in penalties to Santos Laguna in Leagues Cup on August 4.
But the 21-year-old Homegrown Player has performed well in relief, putting in a strong shift against the Western Conference-leading LA Galaxy on Aug. 24 before his goal against Charlotte. This season for Atlanta, he’s appeared in 24 matches with 11 starts (1,088 minutes) across all competitions. That’s not to mention his time with the Trinidad and Tobago national team, including 66 minutes in the Soca Warriors’ World Cup qualifying match against Grenada in the summer.
“Atlanta believed in me from when I was 16,” he said. “The belief they showed to me, the confidence they have in me is a great thing to see.
“And performances like these I’m able to provide to the staff, the fans, the front office, all those people, it’s a great feeling.”
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Great for Fortune however
We all know how this goes…
After countless developmental hours and capital and just about the time Fortune is on the cusp of significant productivity, the front office will sell him – to buy a prospect for next season rebuild.
I don’t think Fortune is going to leave this winter, he is likely to get a new contract that buys out his option years in 2025 and 2026 for a pay raise above the $71,401 he is currently making. The question will be whether we use a U-22 designation on him which will set his cap hit at $200k per year regardless of what we pay him. If we sign him to a U-22 deal before his 23rd birthday in December 2025, we lock him up through the end of 2028 at just $200k/year against the cap. That’s incredible value for what he could become for us at our starting 8 or platoon 8. Since we didn’t spend a penny on Fortune’s acquisition fee beyond his wages, we can convert up to $3 million of whatever transfer fee we get from him in the future as a U-22 into GAM. That is huge because of the new rules the league is adding around the use of GAM and Discretionary GAM (a.k.a. DeGAM according to Efstatiou).
By selling Wiley as a Homegrown Player, we are now able to fully buy down the remainder of Slisz’s approximately $3.5 million transfer fee amortization ($2.8 million remaining over 4 years) to drop his cap hit to just his wages starting next season. That’s huge for our spending flexibility.
Consider that with the new emphasis Garth and ATLUTD Cap Guru Dimitrios Efstathiou placed on the $1 million in Discretionary GAM in 2024 and $2 million in Discretionary GAM they get if they choose the U-22 Pathway (2 DPs, 4 U-22s) and how that lets them add tons of max-TAM players like Slisz, Gregerse, Saba, etc as non-DPs. We will now have DeGAM that can only be spent during the season and GAM that can accumulate and roll over from one season to the next. By developing and selling players like Wiley and Fortune, we are developing the kind of sustainable and competitive football economic system that allows us to continue adding more and more talent to the roster while recruiting higher-quality developmental-level talent who want to be the next one to go through our pipeline to Europe.
I don’t think the fanbase will be very happy if we go the 2DP route, even with the extra DeGAM. It also doesn’t help that it has to be selected at the start of the year and we would be stuck with it through all of 2024. It could still be a way to construct a winning team, but given how much everyone harps on about the importance of DPs, it will not be an enthusiastic start for 2024.
Efstathiou is describing it now as “6 Discretionary Slots”. The makeup of those slots could be 3 & 3 or 2 & 4. The 2 & 4 options also net DeGAM which Garth keeps emphasizing in that interview as $2 million DeGAM the team can use to build across their entire roster rather than towards just one player. He said that the upside of not signing our 3rd DP this window was the ability to roll $1 million in GAM forward to the next window or season by instead using the $1 million DeGAM that came from our “U-22 Investment Model”.
That said, Garth did still emphasize that we were one of the highest spenders in the summer window and intend to be the highest spenders this winter.
Once it was evident that they would not get the 3rd DP of their choice (or regardless depending if the 1M of DeGAM could buy down Gregersen), it made sense to go for 2DP/4U22 option in 2023.
I’m just saying from a general fan perception view, doing 2DP/4U22 in 2024 is not an inspiring move. The next coach is only going to get to influence 1DP signing (if that many). Worse, that signing may end up being saved for the summer transfer window where more options available, so we are going to start half the season with one true DP. Plus, it involves fans having faith that these DP-lites + U22s can push us to the top, which the current sample size doesn’t give a lot great evidence for. Lastly, it feels doing the 4U22 would be going against Garth’s prior statements on limiting big bets on young players.
Again, I’m not saying that these aren’t moves that could get you an MLS cup. I’m just talking about what the perception will look like to most folks.
I feel like there might be some confusion that we should clear up – the current year is 2024. I’m pretty sure the 2DP/4U22 is just what we picked for the remained of the year, and in January or whatever at the beginning 2025 (as in a few months from now), I’d imagine we get to pick again whether we go for 2/4 or 3/3.
Yes, the rule is that teams will make their selection by the Roster Compliance Deadline each season. This year, that was the end of the business day on February 23rd.
The issue we were discussing was which direction Garth and Dimitrios were hinting at taking based on their interview with Jason Longshore where they were very thorough and transparent about the new rules, how they are using the new mechanism, etc.
They are using the current $1 million DeGAM to open up $1 million GAM for use next season. Another new rule will allow them to use $3 million of Wiley’s transfer fee to buy out the amortized cap hit of Slisz’s transfer fee (roughly $3 million) thus making his cap hit just his salary.
The main discussion they had about DeGAM was the added roster flexibility it gives them to spread that Allocation Money throughout the roster rather than being limited in how they can use it and what kinds of players they can use it on like with TAM and Discretionary TAM, which are being phased out through the current CBA and replaced with more flexible GAM. The upside they described for the U22 Model was that a team that wanted to spread their resources across an entire roster rather than focusing on top-heavy options could use the DeGAM to build a mixture of young and DP-lite veterans across the roster. For teams who want to spend tons of money, the 3 & 3 DP Model is wide open and Garth said the club wants to spend this winter.
The other key point to make is that at the end of this window, the FO told us that prices in Europe were wildly inflated above what we wanted to spend on our DP 9, and that due to the timing of the windows, we had a disadvantage in the summer but will have an advantage in the winter to make the last bid. They also said that they aren’t going to spend just because they have the money. They want to spend on the right players. If the new coach comes in and wants to add a few players who don’t need to be DPs or who could be bought down with GAM or TAM to keep adding quality across the roster, they have the option to go with either model in 2025 based on what they see from the transfer markets. By 2026, I think we will be fully on the DP Model train but the question is whether we use the U22 model DeGAM in 2025 to help fill out the roster in the rebuild before going for someone really big in the winter of 2026 right before the World Cup comes to Atlanta.
Yeah. I’m dumb and still think it is 2023.
All good points that I agree with. I think this interview did a lot of heavy lifting to try to make the DeGAM option more palatable. I agree with you that that will be an especially tall task with the fan base.
I can definitely see the logic in it from your other comment of treating 2025 as more rebuilding. It is not pleasant given how long this rebuild has felt, but it makes a lot of sense to build to more consistent success.
I don’t think it makes sense to use a U22 slot on Fortune, since I’m pretty sure that 99% of the usefulness of those spots is in relieving the transfer fee of a player, and they can only make up to the senior max salary
Maybe. We have two contract options for him, and we have one more season until he ages out of eligibility for that. The reason we would do that in a 4D MLS funny money strategy would be to ensure that if we plan to sell him, we retain the ability to maximize how much Allocation Money we can get from the sale after his Homegrown Player contract ends.
We need more of this. If you have the ability to take a good shot and put the ball in a dangerous area, do it. Wish more people would, even when Dax or Slisz gets forward.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Fortune has improved greatly with each sustained opportunity and is now playing with momentum and confidence. A smart coach doesn’t mess with that.
Considering the pattern for Atlanta, Muyumba will come off the bench for his first game coming back from an injury, play around 30 min and if Fortune does not build off of this game, then maybe Muyumba gets the start after that
I think Muyumba slows the play too much. Technically he’s a better player than Fortune but game wise, Fortune seems to be a better fit IF playing farther up
He’s a ball holder, not a play maker and thats why i’m not a fan of him as an 8. He wants to just hold and pass instead of push when needed.