Atlanta United’s Thiago Almada May Have Boosted His Transfer Value Saturday … Without Playing

Of all the voices calling for Major League Soccer to stop through FIFA international match windows, Thiago Almada’s agent is unlikely to be one of them.

Almada’s value as arguably the most certain European-bound current MLS star has been in plain sight through his opening four games of the 2023 Regular season. The 21-year-old Argentine (who is already a World Cup winner) merely scored four goals and assisted four more to start the new campaign, helping his team earn 10 points from 12 in the process.

But any lingering doubts of his value to his current club were truly erased by the misery his side endured on Saturday night in their first game of the year without him.

With Almada one of several Atlanta players away on international duty, a team that entered having won back-to-back games by a combined seven-goal margin was on the other side of a 6-1 hiding to a Columbus Crew team also missing key internationals. And while the final score deceiving in terms of the chances Columbus created, Atlanta’s struggle to generate offense without Almada was glaring. United had only two shots and generated only 0.1 expected goals on the night … after generating more than 1.7 xG and more than 16 shots per 90 minutes across their first four games with their young Argentine star.

Below is a shot of the chronological xG chart from Saturday posted by The Striker’s Atlanta United beat writer Sam Jones, at a point when Atlanta trailed 3-0. (Full disclosure: I’m also a part-time editorial contributor for The Striker.)

According to estimates by Transfermarkt, Almada is tied for one of the four-most valuable transfer commodities within MLS at about $16 million. But of that quartet, only he and New York City FC’s Talles Magno are on the ascendancy of their careers. And Transfermarkt hasn’t updated Almada’s value since the start of the new season, in which he has emerged as an MVP front-runner.

In other words, Atlanta president and CEO Garth Lagerwey’s asking price is likely to be far higher, maybe in the neighborhood of $30 million, a fee that would break the previous record for highest paid for an MLS player. Atlanta was also involved then, selling Miguel Almiron to Newcastle United in early 2019 for a fee reported to be around $27 million.

The main question is whether Atlanta could possibly part with Almada before the 2023 season ends. And there’s two ways performances like Saturday’s could influence summer negotiations. Lagerwey, manager Gonzalo Pineda and others within the technical staff could look at the game film (highlights below) with fear of what could become of a promising season if they sold Almada, and raise the asking price even higher in the short-term. Conversely, European suitors could look at the difference in performances with and without the attacker and concluded he’s worth even more financial risk than they might’ve otherwise.

If he stays healthy, it’s unlikely there will come too many more occasions to evaluate an Almada-less Atlanta. But it’s possible a June 21 home match against New York City FC could clash with another call-up to play alongside Lionel Messi and company.

Yes, it’s probably oversimplifying to suggest Saturday could be a truly pivotal moment in Almada’s valuation. But it certainly brings the implications of one of the most pivotal potential MLS sales in league history into clearer focus.

There are few parallels to draw from here, particularly if Almada goes in the summer. When Atlanta sold Almiron, they at least managed to hang onto him until after he’d helped lead the second-year MLS team to the 2018 MLS Cup title. And even though it’s early days in the 2023 season, you could argue even Almiron wasn’t as influential for that 2018 team as Almada has been so far to the 2023 version. After all, Almiron did get to pair with an in-form Josef Martinez at striker.

More recently, NYCFC loaned striker Taty Castellanos to sister club Girona in La Liga last summer. But that also followed a 2021 championship.

And the picture has also shifted since Atlanta were willing to part with Almiron following those heady 2018 championship days. The club’s first attempts to fill those shoes have been more failure than success. Pity Martinez was more or less a disaster in his brief time in MLS. Ezequiel Barco eventually fared better in his three-and-a-half seasons in Atlanta, but still was a disappointment relative to initial expectations. Almada has been the first signing that appears capable of breaking that trend.

Further, these kind of transactions aren’t something Lagerwey became super familiar with in his previous roles running the Seattle Sounders or Real Salt Lake before that. While the Sounders in particular did plenty of business in the international market with Lagerwey, they generally purchased more experienced players with an aim on keeping them through their prime in Seattle.