It has been almost two months since the January 31st deadline for MLS expansion bids to be sent to the league offices. Don Garber and his team will supposedly pick the best two out of twelve bids to begin competing in MLS by 2020.

We’ve heard, seems like a thousand times now, that “having a soccer-specific-stadium in a downtown area” is one of the highest priorities to the league… and neither Charlotte nor Raleigh has actually made a deal with their respective local government.

Only Sacramento (who had theirs approved in November) has a plan in place: all the others are at various stages of the planning and approval process.

That doesn’t matter to folks who want their respective city to win a bid to join MLS.

The #MLS4CLT and #919toMLS twitter battle is still alive and well… albeit slightly one-sided due to the completely different approaches the two groups have taken. Marcus Smith and SMI have decided to go dark, assumedly waiting for real information to share, while Steve Malik and NCFC have been far more aggressive in their campaign.

NCFC has brought the NWSL’s newly rebranded North Carolina Courage under their umbrella, and they recently announced a partnership with Triangle FC and Capital Area Soccer League that will make them the largest youth to pro soccer club in the US. Of course, NCFC’s opener is this weekend, and NC Courage start their preseason slate on Saturday at Queens in Charlotte, and both are signs that the MLS bid should be taken seriously.

“MLS 4 Charlotte,” meanwhile, is playing things close to the vest, seeing as they currently have no lower-division team to talk about (the USL Independence are not connected with the Charlotte MLS bid as NCFC is with Raleigh’s). And there has been little in the way of news regarding SMI’s bid to be one of the next franchises to enter the league in 2020. Tweets like these are about all the #MLS4CLT hopefuls have had to read while their Triangle neighbors have been putting out news seemingly every week.

So while the two sides both think they have the advantage, we really won’t know anything on the MLS expansion front for several more months. May the Twitter wars continue.

But despite all the news from the Triangle and the lack of news from the Queen City, both cities should continue to be on alert.

There’s a new threat to North Carolina’s MLS hopes, and it comes from a familiar place: Atlanta.

Atlanta United looks for real on the field and off it with 11 goals in three games and two home crowds of more than 50,000 fans. To be fair, we are talking about a very small sample size so far, but they are impressive regardless. They are young, fast and fun, and soccer fans across the country can’t seem to look away or stop talking about them.

Atlanta’s threat to the Carolinas is this: Atlanta wants to be the team of the south and they couldn’t have started off any better. In this article by Doug Roberson, Atlanta United Team President Darren Eales references the reach they now have with their TV deal.

“(With this) we can be a team not only in Georgia but in the whole Southeast region,” Eales said. “With Fox Sports South, we couldn’t have a better partner to have that reach as well as that production quality.”

In order to accomplish this, they need only look over to Cobb County at the Atlanta Braves who have a similar TV deal with Fox Sports. The Braves are the South’s team. They have been for my entire life. They became the South’s team because they had an exclusive TV deal that put them on every TV in the region… and they were good. They won 15 straight division titles from 1991 to 2005 and went to the World Series five times during that stretch, winning the title once in 1995.

Atlanta United could become the most successful expansion franchise that MLS has ever had (sorry, Seattle). They are capturing the hearts and minds of soccer fans across an entire region, and if they become “the Braves of Major League Soccer,” Don Garber may look to larger markets such as the newly vacated San Diego, St. Louis and Nashville to fill out teams 25 through 28 instead of the Carolinas. That is, of course, assuming that the Miami David Beckhams get their act together and take the 24th slot, but that’s another article for another day.

Now, I’m obviously biased, and I think MLS would be crazy to bypass North Carolina. But if I have to look at this objectively, what Atlanta is doing could definitely throw a wrench into things. I am as #NeverAtlanta as they come, but in my weak moments I’ve even gotten excited watching Miguel Almirón knifing through defenses and hitting volleys in the snow.

As a Charlotte resident, I’m still team #MLS4CLT and I’ll never be able to cheer for a team from Atlanta again (sorry, Braves). I’d support a team in Raleigh too, but Atlanta United is coming for all of the South.

I hope North Carolina is ready.

By the way, the Falcons blew a 25 point lead in the Super Bowl.