Noah Cobb: Just a kid from Chattanooga with a big dream

Just six more minutes. Six more minutes of stoppage time for wildcard Atlanta United to complete a monumental upset against Lionel Messi and Inter Miami in game three of the 2024 MLS Cup Playoffs. All the Five Stripes needed was to preserve a 3-2 lead.

But then Sergio Busquets played a cross to the edge of the six-yard box. Goalkeeper Brad Guzan rushed off his line to punch it away, but he was too late. Center back Luis Abram redirected the ball with an uncomfortable header, and it bounced toward another Inter Miami player, who headed it toward an empty net.

The ball took a mere second to reach the goal line, but in that second, the 11 Atlanta United players on the field, plus the thousands of fans watching back home, saw their dreams of a historic upset dashed.

Just in the nick of time, 19-year-old Noah Cobb came to the rescue. He had seen the play developing and rushed over just in time to kick the ball away to safety.

“Not surprised that he did it at all,” said Denise Cobb, Noah’s mother, who watched the game from a hotel in Seville, Spain, with her mother and aunt at 2 a.m. local time. “If you ever watched Noah play over the many years that we have, that movement that he did back to the goal… he always goes back and covers the goal like that.”

That crucial clearance secured Atlanta United’s three-game series win over Supporters’ Shield winner and heavy MLS Cup favorite Inter Miami in the first round of the playoffs. It was a massive moment for the homegrown defender, but those closest to Noah know he has much bigger things ahead.

Kick off

Noah was introduced to soccer at a very young age. He enjoyed running around outside, so his parents, both collegiate basketball players, wanted to find a sport where he could channel that energy. Basketball was not in season at the time, so they decided to sign him up for soccer at the local YMCA in his hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee. In one of his first years there, Noah recalled him and his best friend being placed on opposite teams.

“We always competed in basketball and now in soccer, so that rivalry kind of made me fall in love with just trying to get better and beat him,” Noah said.

This rivalry was just one of the early signs of his competitive spirit. His parents followed sports, so Noah would often be exposed to the different competitions that were played on his family’s television screen. That, combined with the fact that both of his parents were once college athletes, gave him what he called a “competitive gene” from a young age.

Noah wanted to be the best at everything he did. Whether it was a card game or a foot race, he always tried to set things up to be a game that he could win. Naturally, he also wanted to be the best at soccer, which led him to the Chattanooga FC Academy, where he became a standout prospect. It did not take long for his coaches to notice his talent, and it became apparent that he would need a more challenging environment to continue his development. And what was the next step up from an NPSL academy? An MLS academy.

The closest MLS academy at the time was Atlanta United’s, so Noah first tried out with the U-13 group, but nothing came of it. The following year, he tried out again individually for the U-14s and played with the team part-time before joining full-time in his U-15 year.

Entering the academy full-time brought a new set of challenges. For starters, Noah would have to move down to Marietta, where the club is based, which meant leaving his hometown at age 12. Leaving behind the people and places that he grew up with in the relatively small Chattanooga community was hard enough, but it also meant potentially missing a lot of time with his parents during very formative years. His parents had two options: send him to live with a host family or move down with him.

“We were going to parent our son,” Denise said. “He’s an only child… there was no path if we couldn’t be with him. We were just not willing to let someone else raise our child.”

Denise moved down with Noah while his father, Andy, stayed in Chattanooga for work. To this day, Andy still works in Chattanooga during the week and comes down to Atlanta on weekends.

But that was just one challenge the Cobb family faced on this journey. They also had to figure out how to get Noah the best education. Although the club currently has a partnership with Atlanta International School, that was not the case when Noah first arrived, so it was up to his family to research and enroll him into the right institution on their own. Four schools and five years later, he finally graduated from Atlanta International School in 2024.

“It was certainly difficult,” Noah said. “I think you know, changing schools, changing cities, that was probably the more difficult side of it… But I think having such a big change so early on in my life made me not fear change. When something changes or we have to do something different, I don’t fear it as much because I was exposed to such a big change at such an early age.”

Despite the obstacles that came with such a big change in his life, Noah was determined to see it through. He had a dream of playing inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium with the first team, and he was willing to give everything to make that a reality.

Earning his stripes

“Tallish, skinny kid. A little gangly,” said Matt Lawrey, Noah’s U-15 coach and former Atlanta United Academy director, about his first impressions of Noah. “But you could tell with his eyes, just into everything. So when you’re speaking to [him], you feel he’s just eating everything up… then he’d come in the next day, and he started to repeat things you mentioned to him, so just his ability to learn, his ability to hang onto information was through the roof.”

Noah continued accelerating through his development at the Atlanta United Academy. He impressed his coaches with his technical and physical growth, even becoming one of the fastest kids in the academy as he entered his U-16 season. This athleticism, paired with his technique and willingness to learn quickly made him one of the top prospects to watch.

Other qualities that made him stand out were his abilities to communicate and lead. 

“He’s a good communicator, he’s willing to speak to others,” Lawrey said. “I think sometimes kids want to be quiet and just do their thing — it doesn’t help them — and Noah has always been one that’s ‘I’m going to talk, I’m going to communicate, I’m going to be vocal.’”

This vocalness continued even into his time with the first team, where he featured 23 times during the turbulent 2024 season. In an episode of the club’s documentary series “Rooted in the Stripes,” Noah was shown in the locker room voicing his frustrations after a 1-0 road loss to FC Cincinnati.

“You know when, especially last year, since we were struggling and some things were going on, it was, you know, the leaders of the team like Brad [Guzan], Derrick [Williams], and Stian [Gregersen]… they gave me the license to speak up and you know, they gave me license to say these things because we all want to get better and we all want to do these things… I need to continue to be, but in a moment like that, when we’re down, I think it’s better just to say all that we can say in the locker room,” Noah said.

Noah’s hard work and excellence in the academy soon began paying off. In July 2021, just three days before his 16th birthday, he made his professional debut with Atlanta United 2 in a 2-0 loss to Louisville City FC in the USL Championship. After making 11 appearances with the 2s in 2021, he signed his first professional contract in March the following year. He would spend 2022 with the second team before joining the first team on a homegrown contract in 2023.

“I think it was immense pride in just what he accomplished, but also I think you know, just the pride I had in him for being able to say, ‘look, I’ve got a dream I want to do this and I, you know, I’ve got this opportunity,’ and just saying it’s what I want, and he was just so committed to it,” Andy said.

It was a dream come true for Noah. Putting pen to paper was the result of years of hard work, but the work was not over. He may have paved a path to the first team, but now it was time to show that he deserved to be there.

The ball at his feet, the world his stage

The 30 or so Atlanta United players who participate in routine first team training sessions usually step out onto the field at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Training Ground in random order, but there’s always one that appears first: Noah.

Lawrey said that ever since meeting him at age 14, Noah has always made it a point to be early to meetings, training sessions, and other commitments with the club.

“If he’s not there, I’ll make a joke and start yelling at him like, ‘you’re late,’ even though it’s ten minutes before the meeting starts,” Lawrey said. “If he’s the first one out to training and he can get his first little touches in before he starts, he knows he’s going to be his best self.”

That isn’t the only thing Noah does to improve. He also said he has occasional video chats with former Atlanta United captain Michael Parkhurst, who also played as a center back, to review film from Cobb’s matches. Parkhurst, 41, helped Atlanta United win MLS Cup in 2018 and the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup and Campeones Cup in 2019.

“Over the past few years, we’ve talked quite a bit, and that’s definitely someone who helps me with little kind of nuances of the game, little things to improve on that may be situations I haven’t seen yet where he’s seen them,” Noah said. “I think definitely someone with that much experience, especially at this club, I think it’s a great person to have.”

Noah now has 31 appearances for the first team, including four from the bench this season under new head coach Ronny Deila. The Norwegian manager has expressed how pleased he is with Noah’s performances, particularly after the team’s most recent 1-0 loss to the New England Revolution, where he played the entire second half and helped the team avoid conceding any more goals.

“I think he did good. He defended well, and he was good on the ball. Keep on with it,” Deila said of Noah’s performance after the match.

As he continues to work hard to impress his first team coaches, who now include Lawrey as an assistant, Noah is also working toward his long-term career goals. He emphasized that he loves Atlanta United and wants to win titles while at the club, but also said he wants to play in the biggest games that the world has to offer, such as the FIFA World Cup or the UEFA Champions League. Having already received eight caps for the U.S. U-20 National Team, Lawrey is confident that he is on the right path to achieve those goals.

Lawrey also expressed his belief that Noah will not just grow as a player, but as a leader as well.

“He’s the best leader without knowing it yet,” Lawrey said. “He’s going to make people around him better, more than just how much better he improves himself. I think that’s the coolest thing, and probably the biggest compliment I could give him — he’s an absolute captain.”

Atlanta United may have changed a lot since Noah first joined the Academy, but one thing that will never change is that he loves the club. Even though he does not yet have the renown of Miguel Almiron or Josef Martinez, Noah Cobb will be one for fans to watch as he continues to play for the badge and etch his name into Atlanta United history.