Brad Guzan was a very busy man at Chase Stadium as Inter Miami CF and Atlanta United kicked off Round One of the Audi 2024 MLS Cup Playoffs last Friday, making eight saves as the Herons’ star-studded attack peppered his goal with big chances.
A man-of-the-match performance kept his Five Stripes in close contention for a shock upset until the very end, with even Lionel Messi himself expressing baffled wonder at some of the reflexes on display.
As Justin Honeker noted on his Talkin’ Soccer Substack, Guzan posted 3.07 Expected Goals on Target (xGoT) against, a metric that rates on-target shots based on a combination of their underlying chance quality and the quality of their execution; in very simplified terms, it means he turned what should’ve been a 5-1 rout into a tense nailbiter that eventually ended 2-1 in Miami’s favor.
Those eight stops ran his total to 22 saves across ATL’s three high-stakes matches in six days, extending a clutch run of form dating back to the Leagues Cup break, in which he’s been one of MLS’s very best goalkeepers in both statistical and eye-test terms.
"Just one of the guys"
Pretty damn good for the oldest player on the pitch, a guy who turned 40 last month – not that he, of all people, is counting.
“Listen,” Guzan said with a wry smile in a one-on-one conversation with MLSsoccer.com on Wednesday, “you don't look at yourself with a number, with an age. It's more about, do you have that desire? Do you have the ability to carry on? And when you have that, you're just one of the guys, and you're just one of the guys that happens to have a lot of experience.
“I don't feel 40. I feel as if I'm 25 and I'm one of the guys, and I feel that I can just continue to carry on and compete.”
For much the same reasons, he’s not particularly thrilled by the widespread awe his heroics inspired, for the simple fact that it couldn’t stave off defeat for Atlanta, who now must beat IMCF in Game 2 of the series to extend their season at least one more match, with a bumper crowd north of 70,000 expected at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Saturday night (7 pm ET | MLS Season Pass).
“I was able to make a few saves. But the life of a goalkeeper is not about that. It's about getting results, it's about helping the guys in front of you get results – that's the side that really matters, and the only side that really matters,” he said. “That stuff, I don't take into too much consideration. You just move on to the next one.
“I don't think there were many people that gave us a chance to make the playoffs. And so then to find ourselves where we are now? From our eyes, it's not an added bonus, because we fully expected ourselves to be here – probably under different circumstances when we started the season. But needless to say, we're here now, and we're in it.”
Goalkeeping competition
As understandable as that outlook may be from his perspective, Guzan’s agelessness deserves every bit of scrutiny and admiration from the wider public. Keeping himself in sharp physical condition, combined with the advanced reading of the game that comes with two decades between the posts, has powered a striking late-career renaissance that, frankly, even his employers probably didn’t see coming.
Last winter Atlanta signed Josh Cohen, a younger American with UEFA Champions League experience and three Israeli league titles at Maccabi Haifa on his résumé, and made clear that the two would vie on equal footing for the starting job.
“At the beginning of the season, sitting down, it was explained to me that the No. 1 is not yours, it's not his, and it'll be a competition,” recalled Guzan. “But I've always welcomed those types of situations, those types of scenarios, because ultimately it makes the team better. And it's not one individual, it's the team that is going to be the one that benefits from that competition. You just want a seat at the table to have that opportunity to battle.
“I think it's good, it's healthy. It's what you need around successful teams.”
Guzan maintains that he neither needed nor gained motivation from the challenge – “that doesn't come from external sources,” he said. Yet it further underlines the scope of what he’s accomplished, even amid a Five Stripes season that fell well short of expectations, prompting the dismissal of head coach Gonzalo Pineda in June.
Injury comebacks
What’s more remarkable is that it arrived in the wake of the two most serious injuries of his career: A ruptured Achilles tendon in April 2022 and a torn MCL in his left knee a year later. In both cases, he attacked the recovery process ferociously, intent on preventing either setback from writing the conclusion to his story.
“The Achilles, when that happened, I remember thinking, ‘I can't let this be the thing that defines the end of my career,’” he explained. “I was determined to come back from that and I knew I wanted to be able to have that control again, of my body. And so I wasn't the best patient, if you ask our medical staff, I wasn't the best in terms of – I was going a million miles an hour, basically. I wanted to get back out there, and thankfully, I was able to do that.”
He returned to action weeks ahead of schedule after the knee issue and says it’s ATL’s staff, not his 40-year-old body, that imposes limitations on his daily workload.
“If you speak to our goalkeeping coach, Liam [Curran], he's probably the one that has to rein me in, because I'm always wanting to kind of do more and get after things and push,” said Guzan. “We've got a fantastic relationship in terms of understanding what I need, when I need it, in terms of pushing me, on what days is it going to be more of a de-load day. So a combination of Liam and working with our sports science group of, what's the data, what are my numbers saying in terms of physical output and whatnot? They do a good job of managing me.”
Battling the league's best
A grizzled veteran defying Father Time to anchor the resistance of a proud club now rendered underdogs against a lavishly talented tropical Goliath spearheaded by the game’s greatest living player? That’s a pretty irresistible narrative for the rest of us to chew on.
Even more so when it’s Gerardo “Tata” Martino, the chief architect of the MLS Cup-winning ATLUTD side that changed the MLS paradigm in 2017-18 with Guzan in net, leading the Rosanegra.
“The names and the personnel, that immediately stands out, right?” said Guzan of Miami. “From a name standpoint, yeah, it certainly feels Premier League-esque, in terms of the caliber of names. With that being said, that's all good and great, and those guys then have to fit into a system, and being somebody that has worked under Tata before and with Tata, I know how he likes to work and operate, and so he sets them up for success with those guys.
“So then it adds a whole other element – it's no longer just a bunch of individuals, or three individuals, if you will. It's now a team and a unit that can hurt you many different ways. That for us is obviously the challenge of trying to not just stop one or two guys, but trying to stop Inter Miami as a whole.”
This is the Chicagoland native’s 20th year as a professional. The club for which he made his pro debut, Chivas USA, kicked their final ball a decade ago. His first match – and yes, he had a full head of hair back then – was also the Goats’ inaugural match, a 2-0 season-opening loss on April 2, 2005, to a D.C. United side that included Freddy Adu, Jaime Moreno and Ben Olsen.
For further context: 50 Cent, Green Day and Kelly Clarkson topped the pop music charts that week. LeBron James had played in the first of his 20 (and counting) NBA All-Star Games a few weeks prior. Messi had made his first-team debut but not yet tallied a goal for FC Barcelona; he would become Barça's youngest-ever scorer (age 17) a month later with a strike vs. Albacete, via an assist from Ronaldinho.
However many shots Inter Miami pelt at him in this series, it probably won’t compare to the weekly shellackings the young Guzan weathered as a 20-year-old rookie ‘keeper.
Journey to the top
The No. 1 SuperDraft pick – he’s one of two goalkeepers in MLS history to be drafted first, alongside Andre Blake – was pushed into the lineup ahead of schedule due to an injury to presumed starter Martín Zuñíga (who today works as a Spanish-language analyst for MLS Season Pass). Guzan eventually played 24 matches, making more than 100 saves in the process.
“Those were certainly challenging moments,” Guzan recalled. “Especially my first year, I wasn't meant to play – an injury then thrust me into the starting spot, and I was doubting myself, right? So I was like, what did I get myself into? But those moments I think back on and say, yeah, they made me. They helped make me resilient. They helped make me stronger and better.
“To think back to when I was drafted in ‘05 to Chivas USA, and see how far the league has come, it's wild – it's truly crazy to think about how far we've come.”
That baptism by fire with a bad team – the Goats finished dead last in what was then a 12-team league – set Guzan on course for a remarkable climb.
He would win the 2007 MLS Goalkeeper of the Year award as Chivas USA topped the Western Conference standings with the league’s stingiest defense, then transferred to Aston Villa the following summer. He spent the next eight years in England, most of it competing ferociously in the rarified air of the Premier League, where he often scrambled to keep the struggling Villains from getting relegated.
Along the way he became a US men’s national team regular, earning 64 caps, three Gold Cup titles and two FIFA World Cup adventures. When Atlanta came calling during their 2017 MLS debut campaign, it turned out to be both a US homecoming for him and his family – he and his wife Breanne have four children, which makes dad duty just as central to his daily routines as United’s training schedule – and a rocket ride on the most dazzling expansion story the league has ever seen.
Playoff reunions
Facing off against not only Tata and Julian Gressel in this round, but also his former teammate Josef Martínez in a taut Wild Card shootout win over CF Montréal, has given these playoffs something of a ‘this is your life’ vibe for Guzan.
“The moment that Josef and I had after the game, and we were talking and hugging – when you share those types of moments of winning trophies and winning an MLS Cup with, whether it's Josef or other teammates, or ultimately Tata and his staff, you carry those moments forever,” he said.
“We will forever be tied to Atlanta United because of that trophy, and vice versa … When you run into these guys, these are bonds and relationships that forever we’ll have, because of the understanding of the work and what went into the championship season.”
Club legend
Guzan is the only remaining player from the Five Stripes’ glory days, the final vestige of an iconic squad, in many ways the locker room’s institutional memory. He’s now in the final weeks of the guaranteed portion of his contract, with a club option for 2025. With a new coach expected to arrive this winter and sweeping changes likely to ensue, will he return next season?
He certainly looks to have earned that chance. Don’t ask him, though – he claims to have been unaware of his contract status, such is his focus on the here and now of ATL’s playoff hopes.
“To be honest, I appreciate you letting me know about the option,” he replied. “It shows you how far I don't look down the road, I don’t look into the future.
“We'll discuss my situation at the end of the season and see where it goes. But physically, I feel good. And more importantly than physically, I think mentally, I feel really sharp, hungry for success, to be somebody at this club that has seen the highest of highs and probably the lowest of lows, over the years of where we were, and to now start to come out of that a little bit… I want to be a part of the highest of highs again with Atlanta United, and seeing what that looks like going forward.”
