Atlanta United won, and if you believe in an Atlanta sports curse, it’s over now

On Saturday night, Atlanta United won. They won a championship in their second season, and they won it right there in Mercedes-Benz Stadium, in a city that had last won a major league sports championship 23 years ago. They won, in other words, in spite of history or a curse or a string of bad luck that it seemed like Atlanta sports was heir to.

It was impossible to think it was anything but a curse for a while there. The Braves, the Falcons and the Hawks have all enjoyed impressive runs over the years, with the Falcons making the Super Bowl in both 1998 and 2016 and anyways let’s keep moving. I don’t know how many of you are native to Atlanta or even Georgia, and how many of you like soccer enough to have been tuning in for a pretty magical season. But I do know that this is the kind of win that heaves the weight of history off of a city’s shoulder, the way it has over the last decade or so for Philadelphia.

So take heart even in a lost, crummy year for your Atlanta Falcons, because as we’ve learned over and over again in sports, nothing is impossible and no city is truly cursed. There’s little to no hope for this year for this Falcons team, but there is always next year, and Mercedes-Benz Stadium is now a place where you can get championship wins even if you can’t get Chik-fil-A on a Sunday.

As a Falcons fan, I’ll just hope they’re up next. Congratulations to Atlanta United and a lot of deliriously happy fans tonight.