ATLANTA — About 15 years ago, when Atlanta United owner Arthur Blank was first approached by Major League Soccer about starting an expansion team, he ended up turning down the opportunity. At the time, MLS teams were building 20,000-seat soccer stadiums in the suburbs of Chicago, Dallas and Denver—stadiums that would eventually be regarded as mostly underwhelming.
Even then, Blank was ahead of his time.
“They wanted us to build a 20,000-seat soccer-specific stadium in the suburbs, and that was the thinking then. But that just didn’t feel right to me, so we waited,” Blank said here this week ahead of Saturday’s MLS Cup final between Atlanta and Portland.