Did everyone see this tweet on the Atlanta Beat twitter account? Interesting that Atlanta's own staff would say this publicly..
I would not be surprised to see Atlanta Beat fold after this season. By the player moves after last year and this year, it would be easy for Fitz to get financially exhausted when it comes to this team.
That's not the Atlanta Beat's official Twitter account. The official one is @ATLBeat. The one you referenced is @ATL_Beat.
Oh wow. Pardon me not reading the entire description where is says the Official fan page of the Atlanta Beat. I'm sorry everyone. I knew it was a little fishy.
If I were the Atlanta Beat, I'd lean on Twitter to have them change that account's description from "official" to "unofficial" and the name from "Atlanta Beat" to something else. If it fooled you, a knowledgeable fan, then chances are other people might also believe that it's real.
Well to be fair while it isn't an official Beat account the person is right(except the win total is 6, not 4). One win in 15 games and 7 points overall is awful. The team was bad last year but is understandable as an expansion team. The team this year is even worse then last year. With 3 games left for the season to get to the same relative point total as last year they need to basically win all 3 games or win 2 and tie 1. That is just to get UP to the last place point level of last season.
The Beat had a heck of a roster last year, but almost all these players under-performed last year with them. F - Eniola Aluko (2010 WPS All-Star) F - Ramona Bachmann (2010 WPS All-Star) F - Monica Ocampo (one of the best goals in the 2011 WWC) F - Johanna Rasmussen M - McCall Zerboni M - Aya Miyama (2010 WPS All-Star) M - Mami Yamaguchi M - Angie Kerr M - Lori Chalupny (2010 WPS All-Star) M - Tobin Heath (injured) M/D - Carolyn Blank D - Tina Ellertson (2010 WPS All-Star) D - Kia McNeill D - Leigh Ann Robinson D - Katie Larkin D - Stacy Bishop GK - Hope Solo (2010 WPS All-Star) If I'm not mistaken, they had more starting players in the WPS All Star game than any other franchise in WPS last year (FC Gold Pride only had four). In fact, 6 of the 22 starting players (from Marta XI vs. Abby XI) came from the Atlanta Beat. It's hard to imagine how this roster was only able to win like two games together last year, or whatever it was (after the St. Louis Athletica team folded, and the Beat became the Atlantica Beat).
ATL was 0-5-1 before the Athletica players game in; they went 5-8-5 afterward. MUCH more than two wins there. Almost all of "Atlanta's" All-Stars were actually Athletica players, so that's not an entirely fair point to bring up. As for under-performing, Aluko was still one of the top-scorers in the league, and I remember seeing Chalupny do well ever time I saw her. Even Solo was great, or at least as good as she could be with such a holey defense/midfield in front of her. For everyone else, how would you like to have your team fold or see half of your teammates cut to make room? And even if the core of the team was the core of Athletica, STL had only been earning 1.5 PPG at the beginning of 2010 as opposed to the 2 PPG they had for most of 2009. Teams have on and off years.
Fitz sold his military consulting company for something like $150M w/his dad, is anything but cash strapped. I think he did the right move, as far as cutting to the bone, $1.2M a yr for his team. If they keep this squad together and maybe upgrade at the keeper position and get one good solid young forward, they will be competitive. Press would helped them this yr if they drafted her. Girl scores 5 goals with no coaching, not much better in atlanta but an improvement. he stll doesn't have a football team, needs to fill dates in that stadium. pre-world cup, he was pretty much #1 in attendance. he said he lost $900k last season. it has to be less than half of that this yr.
as poorly as this team plays, it's one team i expect to stick around. fitz disposed of or avoided most of the good players to save $$. anything he said about winning games had to be just blowing smoke. we all could see even before the season started that he was trying to cheap it out. he built the team to survive in the wps while losing games.