Atlanta United fans may have been begging for the team to “play the kids,” but the club’s front office seems to have heard “trade the kids” instead.
Per Tom Bogert of GIVEMESPORT, Atlanta United has a deal in place to trade center back Efráin Morales to CF Montréal. This comes after former Atlanta United homegrown center back George Campbell was sold to West Bromwich Albion FC by the Canadian club just days ago.
Morales, 21, was on a homegrown contract and had just started to break into the first team with five starts this season. He started Saturday night’s 3-2 loss to Charlotte FC before being subbed off at halftime. Head Coach Ronny Deila said postgame that he made the decision because Morales “couldn’t continue” and told him he “can’t sprint anymore.”
What do you think of this trade? Let us know in the comments below.
| Get Atlanta United and NWSL Atlanta training ground updates, audio and video content you won’t see anywhere else, Discord access, and more. Support us on Patreon and help support independent soccer coverage here in Atlanta! Click here to start a 7-day free trial. |
[…] […]
I don’t see what we got back for him, so it’s hard to evaluate the trade.
reporting $450k GAM and $350k add ons, and sell-on clause
I’m thinking my latter theory in reply to you at the bottom of the comments might be why this happened.
From face value, this is incredibly stupid. IDK about the progress of that new CB signing but even despite that, we need all the CB’s we can get. ESPECIALY the young ones. And I do hate the fact that they are uprooting a GT student. That school is hard enough as is, much less from out of country and as a professional footballer.
I do not like this move at all.
I’m so disallusioned after all the years of passing back <Rosetto> twirling <Barco> Pity,Araujo,Franco,Ibarra,Moreno,Jahn,Damm,Etienne,L Lopez and so many more all swings and misses. We let Vazquez,Gallagher,Miles,Goodrum <yes USL allstar> Sosa,Nagbe ,Gressel, even Josef now the kids WTF man we suck put them in, oh wait lets FREAKIN trade em for nothing. Are we the Okland A’s !!! cmon man, whose at the helm ?
williams: 32 (regularly injured)
gergersen: 30 (regularly injured)
abram: 29 (regularly beaten)
cobb: regularly benched
morales: traded
seems like we’re set
Yeah we might be more dead now bc of this
[…] REPORT: Atlanta United agrees deal to trade Efraín Morales to CF Montréal […]
Atlanta United seems to be turning into a AAA baseball club in which the point is neither to win games nor to generate fan love and loyalty, but to conduct transfer business.
At this point I continue to pay for my season tickets because i lucked into the best tickets imaginable as one of the first 50 people to reserve my spot during the press conference when Garber and Blank announced that a club would come to town, so I called sell them every week and make it basically cost free for me to go to the three or four games a year that I now bother going to (as opposed to every home game for the first three seasons). It will be something else if the club manages to get so bad that even that’s no longer possible.
I asked my kids if they wanted to go to the Charlotte game and one said “it’s boring – why would I want to spend two hours traveling back and forth to go watch a team lose? If I wanted to sit around and watch losers I could just go hang out with [redacted name of a loser kid].” Broke my heart because it’s true.
Beyond being bad business, as a Tech guy, it really grinds my gears that they uprooted a current student.
For what? Some GAM to buy down Brooks Lennon’s next contract?
Gross.
As a tech guy as well I really loved Morales and was always so filled with pride that we had a student on the roster.
AJC reports the trade is for GAM.
Just gets better and better.
Oh.
This is incredibly stupid.
This makes zero sense. CB is a huge weakness. Have zero faith in Gregersen. Abram is a bench piece. Williams is okay with the right partner. That leaves Cobb, but Deila doesn’t seem to rate him.
This club’s decisions are baffling.
I dunno. They have Gregersen, Williams, Abram, new guy, Cobb, and Morales. My guess is they figured Morales won’t get much playing time in the future and they decided to trade him. Morales is 6th on the depth chart. If they get rid of Gregersen and Abram he’s still 4th in the depth chart.
I liked him BTW. And Campbell to West B??? Good for him (bad for us)
Well, Morales was first on the depth chart at right center back yesterday. So that will be fun going forward.
I cannot fathom the thinking here. Morales has grown into the team and solidified the defense. The first 15 seconds of last night’s second half was proof of that. Even putting aside the talent, he’s a homegrown that costs almost nothing against the cap.
If the FO is trying to push away fans, this is exactly how to do it.
I’d be ok with this if Stian was a legitimate above average starter. Since he can’t stay healthy and is basically stealing money, I’m a bit concerned.
I have ZERO idea of what we are doing.
“Cue Taylor Twellman gif”
I had a feeling this was going to happen. He was showing an incredible amount of promise and honestly was our best defender recently. Not to mention the local ties. I hate this move.
curious what we are getting in the deal. also, if Cobb can’t get the start at CB next week, we are going to have problems.
We better hear from Chris or Garth explaining the logic behind this, cause on face value this seems like once again destroying good quality with high ceiling in exchange for rolling the dice on a supposedly good player who will just fall flat again.
Man, this club is doing everything it can do to drive away its fans. Just damn!
Wtf? The only way I can see this making sense is if they think the depth chart is too much above him and Cobb, that they won’t get playing time. I think we’ve seen plenty of proof that it isn’t.
How much better would our back line be if we had actually kept and built our homegrown defenders who turned into powerhouses, instead of constantly trading them away for players like Gregersen and Abram and Williams?
Not that I trust the organization’s ability to correctly judge talent and potential, but that could be it. If so, they must think his path to significant minutes is perma-blocked here.
The other alternative is they need a certain amount of GAM to get rid of some other players, and he was the most expendable one that could fetch the amount of GAM needed.
So basically if it is the latter we had to give up a good, young and cheap player to fix past contract mistakes. Somewhere out there, Boca giggles into his cocktail.
Unless they are going to be giving us the sun, moon and stars (and taking Miranchuk in the deal), I hate this!!!!
How does $800k (conditional) rate? Not exactly the “sun, moon, stars”. And they also did not take Miranchuk.