Once upon a time, Donald Jarrett and his friends played soccer on fields with goals jerry-rigged by plumbers. Because equipment was not readily available, the goals were hung with camouflage netting purchased from an army-navy surplus store. Baseball stirrups passed for soccer socks.
This was soccer in Atlanta not too, too long ago — during the youth years of the 68-year-old Jarrett, a retiree from the computer industry living in Woodstock.
“We played on dirt,” Jarrett said Saturday. “Basically, it was just dirt. It was so rudimentary.”
Sunday, Atlanta learned that it will host eight of the most important soccer games that will be played in the world during the next four years, in a gleaming stadium several miles west of the fields of Jarrett’s youth.
If there is even a tiny patch of dirt visible on the pristine emerald surface at ultra-deluxe Mercedes-Benz Stadium during the World Cup games it will host in 2026, people will probably lose their jobs. That the city Jarrett was born and raised in — one where he learned to love the game but also one that didn’t have an MLS team less than a decade ago — will be hosting World Cup games is, in his words, mind-blowing.
“That, I never thought would happen,” he said. “Ever, ever, ever, ever. Not even in my dreams did I think that something like that would happen.”
While Atlanta’s status as one of 16 host cities had been known for two years, Sunday was nevertheless a historic day in the city’s sports history. A city that has staged an Olympics, a World Series, Super Bowls, a college football national championship game, Final Fours, grand-slam golf tournaments and All-Star Games for baseball, basketball and hockey learned that it will not only host five group stage games (none will include the U.S., as the Americans will play on the West Coast), but also a knockout-round match, a round of 16 match and a semifinal. Only Dallas received more games (nine).
“Eight games,” Jarrett said. “Unbelievable.”
A semifinal was the highest reasonable aspiration for Atlanta (in a surprise, New York/New Jersey got the final over Dallas) and a deserved prize for all of its attributes as a host city, including a state-of-the-art stadium, hotel rooms out the wazoo, a world-connecting airport, a walkable downtown and fanatical support for soccer.
The semifinal will draw a global viewership in the hundreds of millions. It will arguably be the second-biggest single sporting event staged in Atlanta after the Olympics. Count on at least one member of the Soccer Youth League of Georgia (later the DeKalb Youth Soccer Association) from its inaugual season in 1967 to be there if he can.
“I just got off the FIFA website registering my interest in tickets,” Jarrett said.
Jarrett and others of his generation serve as a timeline for soccer’s history in Georgia. He was among the first youth to play in an organized league in the late ‘60s. He went to Atlanta Chiefs games in the old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium and was there for their NASL championship in 1968.
He played collegiately — at DeKalb Community College and Georgia State — and then played in adult leagues and coached while he waited for major league professional soccer to return. He was a founding season-ticket holder for Atlanta United, part of the massive fan support that helped Falcons owner Arthur Blank land an MLS expansion franchise in 2014. Jarrett has helped Atlanta United lead MLS in average attendance in all of its seven seasons. He was at MBS in 2018 when more than 73,000 filled the stadium to watch the Five Stripes win the MLS Cup, 50 years after the Chiefs’ title.
“I think all of us (longtime soccer supporters) had tears in our eyes a little bit when we saw 73,000 people at a soccer game,” he said.
The announcements were made in an hour-long program on Fox, a remarkable accomplishment of stretching out news that could have been delivered in a one-page PDF over 60 agonizing minutes. It was like the NCAA Tournament bracket reveal show, only with less information and more Kim Kardashian (a celebrity guest).
It was elongated with stilted talk between show host Jenny Taft, comedian Kevin Hart, FIFA president Gianni Infantino, famed soccer announcer Andres Cantor and a string of guests. We learned that Infantino’s favorite Mexican food is tacos, Hart once spent a few months in Toronto and, according to CONCACAF president Victor Montagliani, Canada will be “literally on fire” during the World Cup. The peak moment was Taft asking Infantino about his memories of the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, only for the leader of one of the most powerful sports organizations in the world to respond that he didn’t have any recollection of it, as he was born in 1970.
The show still managed to gloss over information that fans in each city likely wanted to hear most — how many and which games each city would be hosting. Late in the broadcast, Fox flashed a graphic with a tiny font about which cities were hosting the elimination round games, but didn’t spend any time explaining it.
The presentation was so unclear that, at Brewhouse Pub, a bar for soccer diehards in Little Five Points, many patrons watching the program didn’t catch the information about which games Atlanta had been awarded.
“I’m going to all the games (in Atlanta),” said Nick Marchant, who is putting aside $50 a month to build up a fund for tickets. “I don’t give a (hoot about the cost).”
If Taft is still looking for someone with memories of the 1970 World Cup, she can reach out to Jarrett. He watched the final at the old Atlanta Municipal Auditorium, taking in the game with frenzied Italians and Brazilians.
“It was really cool to see,” he said.
The real thing will now be in his backyard, two years from now.
Really cool indeed.
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