Atlanta United’s $22M purchase of Emmanuel Latte Lath — an MLS record — is official, ending a lengthy pursuit that will see the 26-year-old striker come on board as Atlanta’s new starting No. 9.
Tom Bogert reported the deal’s completion on Monday, with Atlanta United officially announcing it on Tuesday. Latte Lath’s contract runs through 2028 with an option for a fifth year.
“(Latte Lath is) a forward with excellent pace and good goal-scoring instincts,” Atlanta United chief soccer officer Chris Henderson said in a statement. “His ability to stretch the field will add another dimension to our attack. At 26 years old, he’s entering the prime years of his career and has already shown his goal-scoring ability in multiple leagues in Europe.”
Latte Lath wasn’t in the team for Middlesbrough’s 3-2 home loss to Sunderland on Monday, just over a week after coming off injured barely 10 minutes into a match against Preston North End on Jan. 25. Reports said that he had traveled stateside to complete a physical ahead of his long-anticipated move to Atlanta. Meanwhile, moments before Monday’s match, Boro announced that it had acquired Sevilla striker Kelechi Iheanacho on loan as a Latte Lath replacement.
It caps the biggest offseason in Atlanta United history as Miguel Almiron and Latte Lath’s incoming transfers total $32M, not including add-ons. For a club that is looking to emerge as a force in not only MLS but the continental stage, it’s a massive statement of intent: all eyes will be on Atlanta to see if these moves pay off.
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[…] on OFFICIAL: Atlanta United complete MLS-record purchase of Emmanuel Latte LathFebruary 7, […]
Does he need a green card to practice with the team, or only to play?
Congratulations, dear Atlantistas. It feels that Atlanta are back! It will be a pleasure to watch Almiron again. And, if you find the time, try to watch some of our Brasileirão games. Neymar is back here, and as much as I detest him, as a person, there is the player, and we will have some fine football in our league.
Not to sound negative, but I have been disappointed with Brazilian futbol. Seems the jogo bonito has disappeared, too defensive, too slow and the flair is gone. Don’t know what’s happened in the last few years, maybe decade…
I haven’t looked forward to a new season like this in several years. We don’t seem to be having to hope someone improves or develops into a good player. There will definitely be a learning curve as there are a lot of new guys but they have talent.
Came home and I saw the news!!! SLAM IS OFFICALLLLL
I thought I’d pull some stats from Transfermarkt for Latte Lath similar to what I did for Miranchuk.
G+A/90 for his entire professional career: 0.60
G/90: 0.52
G+A/90 in Middlesbrough: 0.70 (!)
G/90: 0.62
For Middlesbrough, he started most games and often played full 90+.
He seems to occasionally get injured that keeps him out for a couple weeks, maybe a month or two max, usually around December/January, but other than that seems to be usually healthy. In Middlesbrough, he was never injured except for this recent game, unless him being not in the squad for about 2 months in December ’23 – February ’24 was injury.
Comparing how Middlesbrough did before him vs having him, the season right before Lath came in, Middlesbrough had Chuba Akpom come in for a season tearing things up, scoring a ridiculous amount of goals and helping them reach the highest position since 2016, before leaving for Ajax. So Lath was technically a downgrade from the season prior. However, then compared to the other recent seasons, although the standings haven’t changed that much, the goal rate is decently higher, and he appears to be their 2nd highest scorer next to Chuba Akpom over the last 10 years.
You can look back at his career stats on transfermkt – the designation for those games he wasn’t in says “not in squad”. usually if they’re hurt, it’ll say it’s an injury of some sort.
https://www.transfermarkt.com/emmanuel-latte-lath/leistungsdaten/spieler/392964/plus/0?saison=2023
That’s where I pulled all of this information, and why I didn’t strictly count it as an injury. It’s just a long time to be out, but I couldn’t find the reason why, so I qualified that it could’ve been incomplete information.
RE: spending big money: The trepidation about Atl utd big buys seems warranted: Thiago is so young still.. hard to judge….Luis A seems to be on same pace of productivity (I think), same with Pity. Barco is tearing up a league in Russia and no longer looks like he should have a hall pass But, regression to the mean should show some promise for our most recent pricey transferial adventure. OMG, though, latte lath looks so very very good.
Does anyone know if he’ll have to go through and wait for a Visa or is that all taken care of already? I recall a few players of the past not being able to join the team after being acquired because of visa delays.
Probably answering my own question here, but he’s already in Atlanta so i’m guessing the visa stuff isn’t an issue.
He will have to get a work visa to be able to practice with the team and play in any games. I am pretty sure players can get that once they are in the States.
From I’ve seen in short videos, he has the makings of an exciting forward. Very athletic, fast, good in the air, good ball skills and hopefully very motivated to excel here. I hope we don’t make him play too far back like GP had our CF play. Now we have 3 runners to go after those penetrating passes.
Our new core of Latte Lath, Almiron, Miranchuk, Gregersen, and Slisz are all under contract through 2028. Luke Brennan, Will Reilly, Ashton Gordon, and Adyn Torres are also signed through 2028.
Pedro Amador, Tristan Muyumba, Noah Cobb, and Matt Edwards are under contract through 2027.
[…] OFFICIAL: Atlanta United complete MLS-record purchase of Emmanuel Latte Lath […]
Have 18 days to get him integrated into the squad and up to speed – though I suspect that he will not play more than 45 minutes against Montreal (I am hoping that the groin injury was very minor and that he was taken off the pitch purely as a precautionary tactic).
he should be up to game speed considering Premier League already played half a season. it will more or less depend on how serious the groin injury is.
Fingers crossed… I feel like we’ve constantly had “the most expensive transfer” and they’ve never worked out… but someone can fact check me there
This makes it 6 out of the top 10 transfers. So far Almada was our best of these deals. Pity, Araujo, and Barco never really had the right attitude to me. Jury’s still out on Miranchuk but he and ELL have a chance for working out and even excelling.
I do think that the low return from these players was due to a lack of coaching quality, a they all went to play quite well elsewhere (Thiago Almada just won a Libertadores with Botafogo). And this is where I don´t know what to expect from your 2025. The FO seems to have invested in some fine players. Is this coach up to the task? My Gremio hired the Argentinian coach who was champion in 2024, and he is already causing an impression.
How’s Araujo doing? Haven’t heard much… Barco went to Russia? I don’t know if we can blame everything to bad coaching, maybe the bad scouting of the players had a lot do also. I remember Tata saying he wouldn’t pay 16 mil for an unproven teenager when Barco was acquired. In any event, there is only one way to find out. February 22 is coming soon.
You’re not wrong, we’ve held the record ever since Barco in 2018 (not for each year, but of all time). We were finally going to get beat this year if it wasn’t for Latte Lath.
To be fair though, all of those record transfer players we’ve had were actually very good, they just got completely nullified by bad tactics/coach and a team that didn’t match them. That’s not to say that at some point, many of them didn’t get stuck in bad form and suck on their own, but all of them had shown the ability to have consistent greatness that just couldn’t form here for the above reasons.
I’m assuming the physical came back fine with no major concerns. Even so, I would guess he’s not gonna hit the field immediately to avoid re-injury. I’m sure we’ll be careful, especially with that large of an investment.
What’s the minimum expectation everyone has?
For me, it’s top 5 in Golden Boot, provided he is healthy all season.
25+ scorer points a year bare minimum
I would say 20+ goal contributions is good for year one, but I imagine it will be even higher when you account for his movement creating chances for other teammates without even being involved in the play.
25G/3A
I’m hoping the injury was precautionary too, but I would assume the physical would have clarified if it was a concern or not. But all this hype has me questioning how all this plays out. Call me cautious, but man we’re setting ourselves up for a huge letdown if he can’t stay healthy.
The only thing I’ll add is that this team seems built to score from a variety of positions.
If we do end up putting it all together as a team, expect Saba and Almiron to get their share of goals too.
Id rather ELL get 10 goals on a championship winning side than 30 goals on a #6 seed.
Hyperbolic on both ends (i hope), but still.
Great news, but isn’t this like double his value? Or is he just that good
His value is what someone is willing to pay for him.
Ipswich Town offered £20m (~$24.9m) back in the summer, Middlesbrough just couldn’t find a replacement in time so they declined. We offered less than that, unless the add-ons are so drastic to overshoot the difference.
And if he plays well enough to trigger the add-ons, I doubt the FO are concerned about sending Boro another check.
What was the injury in his last game? He didn’t last long, and he hasn’t played since.
He had a minor groin injury. Shouldn’t be a big deal, he’s reportedly already in the US so that would be why he didn’t play today
He hadn’t played since the injury, but that was at least partially because the game he got hurt in was their last game before yesterday. He didn’t play yesterday because, apparently, the deal was already completed and he was no longer a Boro player. He had a physical in England; Atlanta was obviously satisfied with the results.
LFG!!!!! ☕️
SLAM