Every Detail with Her in Mind
Atlanta City FC’s Deandra Duggans is building the club’s Marietta training ground around one idea, from the carpet to the community work.
There isn't much to see yet. Not to most people, anyway.
Deandra Duggans drives past the site often enough to notice when it changes.
"Every time I drive past the site, I see new dirt move," she said. "So that's great."
Duggans is Atlanta City FC's Vice President and Chief Business Officer, and that dirt, on Franklin Gateway in Marietta, is going to be the club's training ground. It's on schedule, aiming for an opening in early 2028 so the club is ready for its inaugural NWSL season.
There's no roster yet. There's no kit anyone outside the building has seen. What there is, already, is a phrase Duggans keeps coming back to. She describes the facility as built with a lot of intention. Built for her.
"Everything that we're doing and building is, again, with her in mind."
The Boring Things
This isn't Duggans's first time building in this city. She did her graduate program at Georgia State, and some of the professors from her time there are still around. She interned with what she says was every sports team in town, the departed Thrashers included.
She's from DC and calls herself an 'East Coast girl'. She'll also tell you there's no place like Atlanta. Literally no place.
She spent six seasons as director of advertising and branding for the Baltimore Ravens, then four years leading marketing and brand strategy for the Las Vegas Aces. Those Aces won three WNBA titles and became the first team in league history to sell out every home game in a season. When AMBSE named her to this job in April, she came back for the chance to build something from the ground up, in a different sport, with everything she'd picked up along the way.
Ask her for the secret to building a brand in women's sports, though, and she won't hand you one.
"I don't really think that there is, like, a special sauce or a special formula, to be honest with you," she said. "It's really just about doing all the right things, doing the boring things too, just also being consistent."
That's the lens for everything that follows. The details she cares about most aren't flashy. They're the ones you only notice when somebody gets them wrong.
In the Room
The training ground site sits at 1033 Franklin Gateway SE in Marietta, roughly a half mile south of Atlanta United's Children's Healthcare of Atlanta Training Ground. AMBSE is building an approximately 38,000 square foot facility there, with four full fields and two half pitches. It's an investment of more than $100 million.
The club gets updates on the facility every week. Duggans says those calls go all the way down to the carpet and the wall fixtures. Some of it is branding. A lot of it is accessibility and functionality.
That second part is the point. Some of what works at Atlanta United's training ground, just up the road, doesn't necessarily work on the women's side, she said. So the club has been gathering input to make sure what it builds is fit for them specifically.
She's also proud of who's leading it. AMBSE has worked with Impact and Populous on the design and development, and Duggans describes the Populous side of it as a women-led project.
"I'm happy that we have women at the table," she said.
The standard she sets for the players is simple to say and hard to deliver: world class facilities to train in, a world class stadium to compete in, world class hotels to stay in. Transportation, too.
"Everything is done at the highest level fitting for the type of athletes that they are," she said.
The Barriers You Can Fix
On the academy side of the youth conversation, Duggans is upfront. "We're not there yet," she said. "That's in the works." The NWSL does not mandate that clubs have academy programs like MLS, although there is movement within the league to create more progress in youth development of future professional players.
The club just brought someone on board to lead its community work, and they meet every week. Right now, a lot of that work is listening: what people want from the club, and what's keeping girls out of the game in the first place.
Some of the answers weren't on anybody's list.
"Some things that we're not even thinking of that we're learning, like, down to girls not having the correct sports bra size," she said. "And that's keeping little girls out of playing because they're not comfortable. And that's something that you can really fix super quickly."
It's not a headline. It's exactly the kind of boring thing she was talking about. And it's the kind of thing that keeps a girl on the field and connected to the game longer.
The club is also thinking about how to open the game up for children with disabilities. She doesn't have the specific answer yet, and she says so. It's something they're working on. Increasing accessibility for all is a pilar of what Atlanta City wants to accomplish.
She's been listening to the girls themselves, too. Earlier this summer, she spent time with youth players at an Atlanta United clinic and asked what they wanted to see. They had plenty to say, down to how the roster should look.
A House of Its Own
Atlanta City FC isn't building alone. It sits in the AMBSE family alongside the Falcons and Atlanta United, and Duggans says that's by design. Arthur Blank's intention, as she describes it, is for the club to be part of the family while running as a standalone business.
For now, the club leans on AMBSE to stand itself up while it builds out the organization. The goal is its own facilities, its own staff, its own performance staff and its own soccer operations. All of it unique to Atlanta City FC.
She's honest about how much the help right now matters.
"If we had to build it just from the ground up with just five people and no other help, I don't know if I would be sitting here, to be honest," she said. Then she corrected herself. "I'd be sitting here, but it'd be tough."
The people this is being built for are already paying attention. Duggans has heard it from a lot of little girls who've figured out what's coming.
"Oh my gosh. We have a club in our own backyard."
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