Chris Henderson met with media on Friday after Atlanta United announced its 2025 roster, with the club’s chief soccer officer dropping some tidbits about the approach he and the organization have in mind moving forward.
What’s the plan with the two open senior roster spots?
Not only do Atlanta United have $1,031,065 in GAM, but it also has a pair of open slots on its 20-man senior roster, which it can fill before the transfer window closes on April 23 if it so desires. It doesn’t sound like there’s a rush, but the club will re-assess as players (i.e. Brooks Lennon and Pedro Amador) get healthy.
Henderson did say that Atlanta evaluated a few outside back options before deciding not to move forward.
“I love when we can have two deep in every spot and (in) some of the positions three deep, but it’s not always realistic with the salary cap,” he said. “I think we’ll evaluate in the first few games to see where we’re at.”
As for Ronan Wynne, he’ll sign with Atlanta United 2, with the door open for opportunities to train with the first team and possibly position himself for playing time there.
“That’s what we want to do with draft picks and guys who can contribute into the group,” Henderson said. “I think he’s going to get major minutes in with the second team, sign with the second team, and we’ll get a really good look at him.”
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What about U22s?
Henderson didn’t close the door on one of Atlanta’s two open U22 slots being used on a homegrown player, especially since it can keep 95 percent of the proceeds of a future sale. Whether it’s that or a more traditional route of acquiring a player from outside the league, Henderson wants to be mindful that the front office does what it can to bring in the right player.
Safe to say that the U22 route hasn’t gone as planned for Atlanta United since the initiative was introduced in 2021. But it helps that Henderson had a good case study in this area at his previous stop at Inter Miami: Paraguayan import Diego Gómez, a U22 signing, was sold to Brighton in December for a reported $15 million.
“You need to have the environment set up for those players to succeed when they come to come to the market, and you have to make sure that you’re doing enough research and scouting to make sure that that player is going to fit the needs and the role and the profile of that player coming into your team,” he said.
What’s Henderson’s relationship with Ronny Deila?
Garth Lagerwey mentioned the “getting to know you” phase Henderson and Ronny Deila would need to walk through when both men were brought into the fold.
So far, so good, it sounds like.
“As good as I ever could have imagined in the first month of working with a coach,” Henderson said. “I feel like Ronny and I are very similar in many ways in the way we think about football, the way we talk about it, and kind of the vision of how we want to play and where we want to take the team together. And I think it aligns with Garth’s vision.”
The two went through a communication seminar together, Henderson added, further equipping the two men.
“We’re going to have some ups and downs during the season. There’s going to be some challenges along the way. And that’s where this communication and the way we work with each other is going to be really important,” he said.
The academy will get better
Expect changes to Atlanta United’s academy to not just develop players already in the system, but to strengthen the club’s relationship with others in the Atlanta area.
The goal, ultimately, is to eventually see homegrown players affect the first team more consistently: eight players on Atlanta’s 30-man roster are homegrowns. That has the knock-on effect of helping position Atlanta more favorably from a salary cap standpoint, Henderson said.
“We want to make sure that if the player is good enough, we’re giving him opportunities,” Henderson said. “If you look at the value of homegrown players contributing, potentially playing for the first team, helping us win games, maybe selling players overseas, it’s something that (director of methodology) Javier (Perez) is going to play a major part of.”
The club will hire an Individual Development Plan (IDP) coach to assist in helping younger players through the development process.
“They can really give these players that need it the extra attention, whether it’s video, how to be a pro, what you can do off the field, and going through details of how you can maximize yourself, nutrition, everything around that,” Henderson said.
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I guess there was no LB that was deemed a good fit with the team. At least from a financial prospective.
I think that’s part of it. The club also feels very comfortable with our left-back depth of Hernandez and Chong Qui and our right-back depth of Hernandez, Edwards, and Wynne.
But Chong Qui and Wynne are signed to the 2s, so they are limited on the number of matches we can add/play them unless we want to use one of our 2 senior slots.
We still have one of our supplementary roster spots that could be used on one of them. We have 6 call-ups for Chong Qui and up to 16 days across 4 call-ups for Wynne. That should give us adequate coverage for a while.