Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves on a couple of things. First and foremost, this isn't quite done. Fabrizio Romano has reported that Atlanta United is making headway in the fight for Celtic striker Giorgos Giakoumakis (Your-goes Yah-kuh-mah-kiss) and local outlets in both Scotland and Greece have reported that Atlanta has almost wrapped it up entirely, and Giakoumakis's national team coach is telling reporters that he's heard GG is on his way to MLS. But it's not done.
That being said, momentum is real when it comes to transfer rumors. And things seem to be swinging hard toward Atlanta United. I wouldn't buy the custom kit yet, but I'd enter today feeling cautiously optimistic that the Five Stripes have their guy.
Either way, Atlanta's pursuit of Giakoumakis can tell us a lot about the direction Atlanta United is heading in. Even if he doesn't arrive in Atlanta, there are clear signs that the Garth Lagerwey effect is starting to take hold.
The floor is high
Lagerwey gave us a hint last week. In his interview on The AJC's Southern Fried Soccer podcast, he laid out a profile of player with whom you're about to become very familiar.
"If you look at the investment that we've made between Almada and Araujo and Etienne, those are three really good players in that band of three. I mean, arguably, I think we're probably the biggest spender in the league in terms of the outlay there," Lagerwey said. "So if you look at that holistically, we say, okay, when you're signing this nine, it could be that a complimentary nine that is maybe less of a goalscorer and more of a combiner that might in fact make that group of four more effective. I shouldn't say more but effective in a different way, where the collective kind of becomes more than the sum of its parts."
Obviously, after a few years of throwing players with similar attributes who occupy similar spaces on the pitch at the problem, it's encouraging to hear that the club is focusing on finding pieces that fit instead of just finding the shiniest piece. It's also important to note that Giakoumakis seems to fit exactly that profile. We're going to dig into the details in a moment, but let's just lay out a broad profile first.
Giakoumakis is, by all accounts, a chaos-inducing, high-pressing striker with an ability to finish from any angle. If you've been keeping up with The Striker for a while, you'll recognize those traits as pretty damn close to what we've described as an ideal fit for Atlanta. He's the kind of player who can bolster a high-possession team's press while having the ability to drag defenders with constant and intentioned runs inside the 18-yard box.
It's important to note that we can speak confidently about those attributes. At 28 years old, Giakoumakis could be set to become the oldest major signing in club history and, consequently, the major signing we have the most information on.
He's not going to grow into the kind of signing Atlanta could potentially turn into a major transfer fee down the road. The tradeoff here is that his projected floor is high. Like Lagerwey said, with Derrick Etienne Jr., Luiz Araujo and Thiago Almada already in place, you don't need to take a risk on a budding star finding his place in the soccer world. You just need a player who will be effective whether they're scoring a hat trick every game or not. GG's movement and defensive ability mean that every time he plays, he'll provide something that makes the team better. And his scoring ability paired with the talent around him means that he may just find that hat trick every now and then.
The cap hit is not as high
If all of that ability translates to MLS like I think it might, that's worth a DP deal. That kind of ability on a TAM deal will feel like a steal. And it seems from afar like that option is still in play.
Lagerwey may have dropped another key hint on Southern Fried Soccer.
"Look, I think that we're going to be looking at players, particularly at that forward position, who have the potential to become DPs," Lagerwey said.
That's far from declaring the next forward will assuredly be a DP as soon as pen hits paper. The math on Giakoumakis appears to suggest a plausible path to TAMhood as well.
Giakoumakis' salary with Celtic is reportedly $679,000 per year and current reports suggest a transfer fee of around $4.9 million. If Atlanta offers GG a five-year contract, that fee gets amortized over five years to about $980,000 worth of budget charge per year. At the $679,000 salary, his total budget charge comes out to about $1.66 million, right on the line between Max TAM and DP.
Clearly, we're veering into unlikely territory here. Giakoumakis will undoubtedly be looking for a raise and, at that point, the transfer fee would have to decrease relatively significantly. However, Marcelino Moreno somehow fit in as a TAM player despite a similar salary and a reported $7 million transfer fee. Sometimes you just throw your hands up and say "MLS!" and try not to think about it too hard. Plus, there may also be ways to work around certain charges via a loan-to-buy setup or other general things that the Galaxy have probably tried to get away with in the last decade.
If Atlanta can turn this into a TAM deal, that would leave them open to look at a DP midfielder. A DP midfielder in the same mold as other Lagerwey signings like Joao Paulo and Nico Lodeiro, along with the additions of Etienne and GG this offseason, would turn Atlanta United into instant MLS Cup contenders.
But a DP deal for Giakoumakis would be far from the end of the world. Outstanding TAM-level midfielders exist. And Giakoumakis seems worth it.
A human tornado
The caveat to all of this is that I'm not a Celtic fan and I haven't been following Giakoumakis for his entire career. All we can really do here is base our assessments on numbers and the judgments of folks that watch him day in and day out.
We can also leap to absurd conclusions from highlight reels and stop there if you want. Gonna give you the option to do that right now. You're welcome.
A player's best moments don't tell you everything about a player. But it's readily apparent that when this guy is on, he can ball. He checks in at 6'1" with outstanding body control and an innate sense of "ball goes in net" no matter what angle he's at or what position he's in.
That skillset led him to 26 goals and the Eredivisie's golden boot in the 2020-2021 season, and 13 goals and the Scottish Premiership's Golden Boot in 2021-22. Which begs the question: Why is Celtic ready to move on?
It's very, very straightforward. Giakoumakis isn't as good as Celtic's current starter. Kyogo Furuhashi has scored 17 times in 18 starts this season. He's averaging 1.18 goals per 90. GG isn't too far behind at a still stellar 0.77 goals per 90 in 698 minutes, but sometimes the other guy is just in a better moment.
That's a long, long way from saying Giakoumakis is bad or struggling, though. The Athletic's Owen Brown laid out some of the reasoning behind Giakoumakis's departure last week. I disagree with some of Brown's conclusions, however. I'm not trying to start some kind of journalist beef here, I just view what Giakoumakis is doing differently in the context of how he fits into Atlanta United.
There's certainly truth in the fact that Giakoumakis hasn't always been an elite goal scorer. His 26 goals in 2020-21 remain an outlier aided by slight overperformance of his xG and Eredevisie defense. But Brown expresses concern over Giakoumakis' recent shot selection. His xG per shot is down from an absurd 0.21 xG per in 2021-22 to...a still very much elite 0.14 per shot despite largely playing as a substitute.
For context here, the average MLS shot is generally around 0.10 xG. MLS players with an xG per shot average of 0.14 or lower last year include but are not limited to Hany Mukhtar (0.13), Chicho Arango (0.14), Jeremy Ebobisse (0.14), Sebastian Driussi (0.12), Cucho Hernandez (0.07), Julian Carranza (0.13), Brenner (0.14) and Taty Castellanos (0.14). I wouldn't be worried about the chances he's finding.
Interestingly, Brown also points to struggles for Giakoumakis as an all-around player. I'll largely differ there. Brown has seen more of Giakoumakis than me. I should note though that the defensive numbers that are available are relatively outstanding compared to his peers at forward. And other folks have taken a look at Giakoumakis and come to different conclusions about his all-around ability.
The folks at Total Football Analysis recently offered their own deep-dive analysis of Giakoumakis and noted a few things that should stand out to Atlanta United fans in particular. They describe his hold-up play as generally excellent and his movement in the box as frenetic and constant. He can make effective runs to either post. And their eye test agrees with the numbers, he's an effective defensive forward. That sounds pretty all-around, doesn't it? Even if he's not going to be an outstanding dribbler or deliver a final ball.
Like always, I'd imagine the truth is somewhere in the middle. We're not talking about a perfect player here. But his attributes do seem like a near-perfect fit for Atlanta United. There are two traits that the folks at Total Football Analysis described that cemented that for me.
First, they noted that his defensive ability and repeated diagonal runs in the box profile for a team that loves to dominate possession. Second, they eventually conceded that, at his core, he's an agent of chaos. And agents of chaos in a high-possession team with pieces like Araujo, Etienne and Almada around them make all of those pieces more likely to find themselves in quality positions.
Whether it's through drawing defenders, going full throttle toward goal or aiding Atlanta's league-worst press, Giakoumakis would, in theory, raise the level of the team around him in a way that none of last year's strikers could. Now the Five Stripes just need to get the first major signing of the Lagerwey era over the line.