Dimitrios Efstathiou joined Atlanta United in 2021. He came at a troubled time for the club. Paul McDonough, who helped build Atlanta until 2018, had just left to join Inter Miami. His greatest accomplishment, one that I believe goes unsung, was his acquisition of Darlington Nagbe. McDonough was Darlington’s agent. Some fans give Carlos Bocanegra credit for his acquisition of MLS talent in Atlanta’s glory years, but it was McDonough who held the seat that Carlos would eventually fill after 2018.
McDonough returned to Atlanta in 2021 for a very brief spell. Inter Miami was left in shambles. McDonough was accused of salary cap manipulation by having 4 designated players on their team. Once his cap crimes were official, he was suspended from MLS for 2 years. Atlanta found itself in a strange place, likely concerned about the appearance of employing twice a person who knowingly manipulated league rules. McDonough was terminated from Atlanta after 4 months. Darren Eales, Atlanta’s President at the time, turned to the one place that he knew would bestow confidence, the MLS corporate office. Atlanta hired Dimitrios Efstathiou, who, according to the press release at the time, “comes to Atlanta United from Major League Soccer, where he previously served as Vice President, Business & Legal Affairs for MLS and Soccer United Marketing (SUM) and most recently as Senior Vice President of Player Relations & Competition.”
Atlanta was secure in its knowledge that they wouldn’t raise any suspicion by employing a disgraced executive where his former club was facing the largest ever financial punishment the league had ever issued. Dimitrios would restore confidence in Atlanta United and its compliance to MLS roster rules.
But what does Dimitrios Efstathiou do here?
To answer this, we need to consult his former boss, Garth Lagerwey. Garth in a 2023 interview with Sounder At Heart, his former club's primary media outlet, had this to say (this starts at 5:00 and has been edited for clarity):
“We have Dimitrios Efstathiou. Dimitrios came over, he ran the CSO committee for the league for 10 years and ran the player department. He’s a Harvard-trained lawyer, just a really high-level guy. He runs all the transactions for us. That honestly was the single most liberating thing for me. We’re still going to source players in a similar process using scouting and analytics. Carlos Bocanegra will direct that. Jonathan Spector, head of recruitment, people in the same role as the Sounders, but now when it gets to a certain point, then they hand off to Dimitrios and Dimitrios connects the transaction. If you're the general manager with the skill set that I had, that’s your job, you’re in the trenches, you’re negotiating. You’re managing a visa process. Your fingernails are dirty.”
That’s a lot to take in. Excellent work by Jeremiah Oshan. This was the first interview Garth Lagerwey had with any non-club-affiliated media after starting the job in Atlanta. Getting him to be this open and transparent with the work he was doing is exceptional.
Let's put this into a flow chart that we might even assume is used inside of Arthur Morris Blank Sports and Entertainment (AMBSE), owners of Atlanta United.
Authors note: This flowchart was created by pasting the above text from Garth Lagerwey into a Copilot bubble inside of PowerPoint. Power Football, as a human writer, does not endorse the use of AI in writing, except when it’s funny to see business speak converted into actionable steps like this.
When it comes to MLS salary cap dump time, and we get frustrated to find out that Atlanta United once again has no space in the league's budget constraints to make player acquisitions, who should we get mad at?
Who is responsible for the bad contracts?
Arthur Blank and Dimitrios Efstathiou are the most culpable for the disaster Atlanta United are in. Blank said in 2020 that he directs his teams to spend the max amount of the salary cap. From that interview:
“We’ve always been tight to the salary cap. We’ve always spent right up to the maximum. I don’t know, Rich [McKay] mentioned the other day, he thinks we have been leading the league in cash expenditures. That may be exactly so or very close to it. We’re always going to be in that position. We’re never going to keep resources from doing the right thing.”
Efstathiou is responsible for closing the contracts and managing the salary cap. It’s no coincidence that since he joined in 2021, we've endured cap hell. Multiple CEO’s, sporting directors, and managers have worked with Efstathiou. They all have encountered limited ability to acquire players. If we’re ever going to get out of the 2 to 3 transfer windows to fix the club cycle, maybe we should hold the SVP of Strategy more accountable for the lack thereof.
What can Atlanta United fans do about this?
First, in my opinion, we need to have more constructive conversations about players' wages and salary cap hit. I think we oversimplify a person's contributions by connecting them to their wage / cap hit. It’s not a player's fault that their agent negotiated a wage that limits the team's budget. You can, and should, criticize a player for their performance. To say that a performance was fine, but not what a player of a certain wage level should be paid... Well, in my opinion, that’s a lazy critique. Remember that how much the player negotiated to make kicking a football is not the reason why the kick didn’t work out the way you would have preferred. It was the club's decision to pay him that wage.
A better critique, and one that I think makes the discourse more useful, would be an actionable critique. For example: “I think a player is slow at defense and backpasses too much.” That gives you a basis for a discussion about the aspects of their game that need to be adjusted or what limits you perceive they have within our system.
Lastly, we need to critique to the appropriate person when having these discussions. Based on what we know from above on how the organization is structured, I propose assigning your criticisms in this manner.
If the players' wages and/or salary cap hit don't make sense - Dimitrios Efstathiou
If the players' skills do not fit the system Atlanta is attempting to play - Chris Henderson and/or Jonathan Spector
If the system is badly designed for the players available on the roster - Tata Martino
If the whole thing is a dumpster fire - Arthur Blank and/or Mauricio Culebro
Also, remember that there is always a need for nuance when offering analysis. People collaborate and make decisions as a team. No one really knows what goes on behind closed doors. And most importantly, these are humans, with families who live in our community.
An earlier copy of this post was published via Atlanta United Fan TV and has been reposted with permission.