Atlanta, GA - The loss of Julian Gressel to D.C. United crammed a typical 10 year existential crisis that all soccer fans attempt to slowly numb with alcohol into one off-season for Atlanta United fan Joseph Wainright as he added an Against Modern Football t-shirt to the online shopping cart on Amazon.
“I really feel like I’ve packed in 10 years of being a fan over the past off-season or two,” stated Wainright to The Nutmeg News. “I’ve gone from feeling like my team is a club and a family to realizing that everyone is out for themselves and that my fandom is really a cosmic blip in a gigantic corporate machine dedicated towards profit. When Darlington Nagbe, Yamil Asad and now Julian Gressel leave doesn’t this show that our fandom of players is essentially meaningless and there’s no point in really anything?”
Wainright stated that he truly believed that Atlanta United was fostering a different connection between the players and the team and the fans and the town right before the loss of Julian Gressel pushed him over the edge into a numb and frustrated malaise that made him question what he was even really doing here in the first place and is this really any different than being a fan of the Falcons?
“I don’t know man,” stated Wainright as he picked at the corner of the fringe on his 2019 scarf. “I thought this sport was different somehow. The fans are real, but I thought it was going to be different. You know, something where we would feel a connection with the players and the team. Whatever this new stuff is I am against it, even if this is how most sports fans feel on any given day.”
Despite his dangerous flirtation with hindsight, Wainright indicated that he was coming to terms with the process.
“There’s only so many times that your favorite players and coaches can leave a team before you realize that they don’t mean anything anyway. I probably shouldn’t take this game so seriously this season, honestly,” stated Wainright as he drained another Hoplanta.
The Nutmeg News will have more on this as an apoplectic and raving Wainright curses out Julian Gressel and Carlos Bocanegra at the same time for the entirety of Gressel’s return visit to Atlanta.