US OPEN CUP: Where It All Began - A History of Soccer Between Atlanta and Chattanooga
- Philip Farrell
- 5 minutes ago
- 8 min read
Credit: Chattanooga FC
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Chattanooga, TN — Atlanta United Football Club makes the 2-hour journey up I-75 on Wednesday 15, April to meet Chattanooga Football Club in the US Open Cup Round of 32. In many ways, it's a journey back to where it all began for Atlanta United and for soccer in Chattanooga and the Southeast.
For it was at Finley Stadium that Atlanta United played its first ever game, a February 2017 friendly against Chattanooga which it won 4-0. Over 12,000 spectators were there to see Héctor Villalba, Yamil Asad, Josef Martínez, and Andrew Carleton write their name into Atlanta soccer history, scoring the club’s first goals, as Atlanta United was born and rode off into the sunset.
But the origin story of Atlanta United and the history of soccer ‘firsts’ between the two cities goes back further, much further. In fact, soccer bouts between Atlanta and Chattanooga have been going on for over a century.
Growing Pains:
While the Atlanta Chiefs (1967-1973) and its successors of the old North American Soccer League (NASL) never faced opposition from Chattanooga, as far as I know, regular games have been going on since the early 1990s. When the Chattanooga Railroaders (later Express) entered the United States Interregional Soccer League (USISL) in 1992 they joined the wonderfully named Atlanta Datagraphic Magic in the Southeast Conference. The Express and the Magic/Lasers would trade blows over the course over several years in both USISL indoor and outdoor leagues, with Atlanta generally being the more successful. This included the semi-finals of the 1993-94 and 1994-95 indoor seasons where the Magic beat the Express before going on to win the championship both years. Both sides would fold with something of a shrug in the late 1990s as the domestic game was revolutionized by the introduction of Major League Soccer (MLS) and the merger of the USISL with the American Professional Soccer League (APSL) to form the United Soccer League (USL).
The Southeast became something of a ghost town for pro/spectator soccer in the years that followed and with the only consistent presence being that of the Atlanta Silverbacks. The Silverbacks, begun as the Ruckus, rode the wave of Soccer Warz from their inception in 1994 to their dissolution in 2015. They would perform hopscotch between the APSL, the USISL, the USL, and the renewed NASL. While experiencing a dip in its mid-existence, it was popular enough to attract an average of 4,677 fans to Silverbacks Park in the 2013 season. Otherwise, there was a conveyor belt of clubs that would come and go, playing across the alphabet soup of lower league soccer. This included Knoxville Force, Inter Nashville, Birmingham Hammers, FC Greenville, and Rocket City United.
‘Lightning in a Bottle’:
Then, during the Silverbacks run, along came Chattanooga Football Club and its ‘lightning in a bottle’. Formed and owned by fans and community members, CFC entered the National Premier Soccer League (NPSL) in 2008 and were an instant success, especially off the field. To this day, Chattanooga FC boasts the highest average and single-game attendance in NPSL history. In its first two home matches against Atlanta-based sides Atlanta FC and Saturn FC, an average crowd of 1,550 came to watch them play. In their final home game of that first season, on July 4, 2009, over 3,000 fans witnessed the club’s victory over Pumas FC of Birmingham, Alabama. The club's average season attendance for league games was approximately 2,100.
As well as Atlanta FC and Saturn FC, Chattanooga would play matches against several Atlanta-based teams that came and went. Atlanta Silverbacks Reserves (later Atlanta SC) were a regular opponent in NPSL (whenever divisional alignment allowed), while the club would also face Atletico Atlanta in the Fall 2021 NISA Independent Cup after transitioning to that league in 2020. They would come face-to-face with Atlanta Silverbacks in the US Open Cup two years in-a-row in 2014 and 2015. In the former, they lost 5-0 at home in the Third Round while in the latter they came close to revenge but ultimately fell to a 2-1 loss in overtime.
In August 2015, Chattanooga hosted the NPSL National Championship against New York Cosmos B and drew a U.S. amateur soccer attendance record with 18,227 fans witnessing a thrilling match won by the Cosmos, 3–2 in extra time. These were the sort of crowds any amateur or lower league side in most places can only dream about. Coming as they did in the American Southeast, the heartland of SEC college football, the soccer community began to take notice.
It was the success of Chattanooga Football Club, with its large crowds and clear buy-in from its community that provided a blueprint for pro soccer in the region, and sowed the seeds for renewed and, to this day, successful efforts in Knoxville, Nashville, Birmingham, Huntsville, Charlotte, Greenville, and Atlanta. Chattanooga FC had proved that soccer could thrive in the region and that fans would turn out in numbers if given something worthy of turning out for.
So, when Atlanta United turned up to Finley Stadium on that warm February afternoon in 2017, they weren’t just visiting a lower league side for an easy friendly, they were paying homage to the club that finally seemed to have cracked the code for Southeast soccer, and the narrative around the game and the tifos on display certainly bore this out.
Credit: Atlanta United
Chattanooga FC and Atlanta United:
Three more meetings between the clubs have taken place since. In 2023, a second friendly was played at Finley Stadium, this time ending in a thrilling 3-3 tie. 7,513 spectators were in attendance as Luiz Araújo (2) and Machop Chol’s goals for Atlanta were not enough to cancel out strikes for Alex McGrath and Markus Naglestad (2) for the hosts.
The first competitive game between the clubs saw them meet in the 2022 US Open Cup Third Round. Atlanta elected not to play the game at their magnificent Mercedes-Benz Stadium and instead hosted at Fifth Third Stadium in Kennesaw, just north of Atlanta and home of their reserve side. Araújo, Ronald Hernández, Marcelino Moreno, Brooks Lennon, and Dom Dwyer (2) knocked in goals as CFC was given a 6-0 beating.
January 2025 would see Chattanooga finally defeat Atlanta, earning a 2-1 win in a pre-season friendly at Finley Stadium. Naglestad and Jesus Ibarra scored for CFC, while Ronan Wynne netted for the visitors. Just over 4,000 fans were in attendance.
Of course, since 2024 Chattanooga FC has met Atlanta United’s reserve side Atlanta United 2 regularly as both play in the MLS Next Pro. Of the six games they’ve contested, ATL 2 has won two, Chattanooga has won one, while three have been ties (with CFC winning all three resulting PK shootouts).
Chattanooga FC’s women’s side has also played various teams from the Atlanta area during its two spells in WPSL. Lately this has included Atlanta Fire United, Georgia Impact, and UFA Gunners who hail from various suburbs circling the city. Scenic City SC and Chattanooga FC U20s down in the UPSL are equally no strangers to visiting and hosting visitors from the Greater Atlanta Area, playing as they do in the Georgia Division.
But among all these meetings with Atlanta United and other teams from Atlanta, Wednesday’s game is different. It is the first time a team from Chattanooga will welcome a top-flight Atlanta side to the Scenic City in a competitive game. In fact, it's the first time a top flight team from anywhere will come to Chattanooga for a competitive game.
The Human Element:
Of course, the mobility of soccer has also provided opportunities for the exchange of more than games, but of human experiences too.
The Atlanta Chiefs may have never played in Chattanooga, but they would leave a legacy that would influence CFC in years to come. Former Chattanooga FC Head Coach Rod Underwood, growing up as a kid in Atlanta, would later cite the influence of Tony Whelan, a player for the Chiefs, who as his coach, gave him his first taste of a formal education in the game. Underwood would coach Chattanooga in their tie against Atlanta United in the 2022 US Open Cup and friendly in 2023.
Credit: USSF Communications
Noah Cobb is a Chattanooga-born center-back now playing with the Colorado Rapids in MLS. A product of the Chattanooga FC Academy, he was later signed by Atlanta United and would make 61 appearances for their reserve side in the USL Championship and MLS Next Pro, as well as 40 appearances for their senior team. Cobb was in the Atlanta United side that played Chattanooga in the 2025 friendly.
This season’s Chattanooga FC squad includes 18-year-old Ashton Gordon, on loan from Atlanta while last season it included Ethan Dudley, who was signed from Atlanta United 2.
It's not unusual to see Atlanta United jerseys and paraphernalia dotted around downtown Chattanooga, as the Five Stripes would likely be the preferred MLS outfit for many soccer fans in the city. There may well be a few houses divided come next Wednesday.
Deeper Ties:
Chamberlain Field on the campus of UT Chattanooga closed in 1997 and was demolished in the years that followed. Holding over 10,000 spectators at its end, it was the home of the UT Mocs Football team since 1908. It also hosted minor league baseball’s Chattanooga Lookouts for one season in 1909. In 1997, the Mocs moved to the new Finley Stadium (now also the home of Chattanooga FC) and 89 years of hallowed memories were ended as the 21st century loomed. When it closed, it was the second-oldest on-campus college football stadium after Harvard’s.
This week, I visited the grounds of the old Chamberlain Field to see what's left. There’s not much. A grass berm on the southern end marks the old Oak Street grandstand, while that of Vine Street now houses a building and greenspace. One thing that does remain, is the pavilion which was constructed out of stadium materials.
I came to Chamberlain because this was where it all began for Chattanooga soccer. For it was here in 1912 that the Atlanta Soccer Football Club played a Chattanooga XI in what is widely regarded as the first inter-city match in the South. This was four years after the first recorded match in Atlanta, where the game seems to have been introduced by British (mainly Scottish) and Irish immigrants.
The match in Chattanooga kicked off at 3pm on a February afternoon (as did Atlanta United’s first game in 2017) and those in the unspecified large crowd paid 15 cents each for the spectacle. The game was the brainchild of a Scotsman, resident in Chattanooga called Archibald McLundie who had played the game in his native land as well as in some of the larger cities of industrial America. He accepted a challenge from the Atlanta Soccer Football Club who were looking for teams in other cities to play. (Some reports refer to this Atlanta team as the ‘Atlanta Crackers’. This was the name of a contemporary baseball team who played games at some of the same sites as the Soccer Football Club, but I am not sure how related they were).
Amazingly, Atlanta would win the game 4-0, exactly the same scoreline that Atlanta United beat Chattanooga FC by in 2017. Oh, doesn’t the history of the beautiful game hold such majesty!
While the result didn’t go Chattanooga’s way, the event was a gift from Atlanta, the bringing of the global game to the base of Lookout Mountain. Could any of those sporting pioneers have imagined that a century later, Chattanooga would re-gift the game back to Atlanta and the South, through the blueprint of Chattanooga FC?
Just over a decade later, McCallie School in Chattanooga would set up their first soccer program in 1925. Their rivals Baylor would also field a team that year as the schools kept the flame of soccer alive in Chattanooga for the next 70 years.
Next Wednesday the Boys in Blue and the Five Stripes square up. The Choo Choo will roar toward the City in a Forest. Blue and White will clash against Red and Black, and another chapter will be written in the shared soccer history of Chattanooga and Atlanta.
May the best team win. To the beautiful game in the South, where it all began.
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