This Sunday is Mother's Day. A very special day for almost everyone in the world. Make sure you tell your mom how much you love them and appreciate them. Sunday is also a very special day for our little community here. May 8th, 2015 is the official birthday of Dirty South Soccer as a website.
A year from Sunday is when the first ever post was published on then "21 Peach Street" right here.
Welcome to 21 Peach Street: A blog for soccer fans in the South who are anxious for MLS to arrive in Atlanta. In the future we hope to transition over to SB Nation and become their official Atlanta United blog. With your help on social media we can grow this blog into a powerhouse in the American Soccer community. Let's show the country that the South cares about soccer.There is a long time between now and March 2017, but we're going to be with you every step of the way and bring you the best coverage possible with generous doses of US Soccer, European leagues, youth soccer, and even a little pop culture thrown in. It's gonna be a fun ride.
Thanks to the tremendous support from the Atlanta United community, SB Nation noticed our efforts and decided to officially bring us onto the network in September. That's nearly a full 18 months before the team kicks a ball. They put their faith in us to run a website on their network of a team that doesn't even exist. As they say, the rest is history.
Instead of going on about the future and how awesome this community is, let's take a little trip down memory lane and how DSS actually came to be.
As many of you know we began this journey under the name 21 Peach Street. The logic behind this is that "MLS Atlanta" at the time would be the 21st team to enter the league in 2017. It's also a play off of the popular TV series and films 21 Jump Street.
The math holds up, they will be the 21st team to enter. If Major League Soccer was a logical entity, that would likely be our name at this very moment and forever. It wasn't until several weeks after creating the blog and all the social media accounts that we realized that MLS classifies their Atlanta franchise as the 22nd in the league's history.
For some reason they still count Miami, who still isn't guaranteed a spot in the league at current time, as the 21st club in league history.
So, we decided that a rebrand was necessary. After the official name of Atlanta United was announced in July it was time to get to work. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that we brainstormed hundreds of possible names. I irritated Brendan (DSS Editor), Aaron (DSS Editor), and our SBN Soccer League Manager on a daily basis about the name. It basically consumed me, while they all laughed as I went crazy over it. I knew that we had to get it right.
We all agreed that expanding on the whole hip-hop culture with the blog name would be the right way to go. My personal favorite for months was a play off of the Outkast song series Da Art of Storytellin'. Our blog would be called Da Art of Soccerbloggin'. If I had any backbone or conviction that's probably what it would be called today.
Discussions about the name also brought other possibilities such as:
AU Gold Everything
The Gold Club
Southern Fried Soccer
Stankonia FC
Blankonia FC
22 Peach Street
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Finally, after months of debating, Dirty South Soccer just felt right. It encapsulated the culture we were looking to reflect within the community. A fresh perspective in the soccer news/opinion realm. Judging by the reaction of the community to both the name and our dope logo, I'd say we did a pretty good job.
So far, I honestly think we've done a pretty okay job. It hasn't been easy covering a team that has maybe one news item a month to discuss if we're lucky. We've made a few enemies along the way with our opinionated nature, but that comes with the territory. Thanks to the amazing Atlanta soccer online community you've supported us in these slow times and have set us up to become something special when the team actually begins playing.
On social media we've gained nearly 2,300 Twitter followers and 750 Facebook likes in a year. Our website consistently competes with many of the already existing MLS blogs and we're still nine months away from First Kick.
Our dream coming into this venture was that we could possibly build a massive blog to rival Sounder At Heart. The South is a huge community and with your continued help and support we're well on our way to building something that everyone in the American soccer media landscape will be forced to take notice of.
Please keep sharing our posts that you find insightful, funny, or helpful. Please keep commenting and tweeting with us. All of those small things help us as a community and shows the whole league how serious Atlanta United supporters are.