The Athletic's MLS page on April 11, 2019.

Significant change appears underway for soccer coverage at The Athletic. A few writers who had been covering specific MLS teams for the site have tweeted about being told they’re no longer needed, and added some comments that the site may be moving to regional MLS beat writers rather than team-specific ones:

But this comes in the same week where The Athletic announced the hire of Megan Linehan as a women’s soccer staff writer, and promised to cover women’s soccer “from every angle, and on the merits of the game itself” both around the World Cup this summer and beyond that. And that announcement saw other tweets noting that further soccer hires were likely coming:

Asked for comment on the soccer changes, an Athletic spokesperson told Awful Announcing “We have heard the concerns that subscribers have about changes to our coverage. We have a big announcement on the way, one that the whole company is very excited about. We’ll be sharing that update very soon.” Athletic Soccer editor George Quraishi also used similar language on Twitter:

We’ll see what comes of that announcement.

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.