The Process Behind Atlanta United’s Signing of Adrian Gill, from La Masia to MLS

Atlanta United’s signing of Adrian Gill is easy to summarize in a sentence.

A young midfielder with a Barcelona background has signed a multi-year contract with Atlanta United.

But that version misses the story.

Because Gill’s arrival in Atlanta is not the beginning of a career.

It is the continuation of a journey that started more than a decade ago, moved across an ocean, passed through one of the world’s most demanding academies, and faced adversity through injury at the edge of a first-team breakthrough before now shifting to Major League Soccer.

Gill arrives in Atlanta as the next step in a long, carefully constructed development path, one that has evolved along the way but now gives him a unique platform from which to build success wearing the red and black stripes here in Georgia.

Before La Masia: The Road to Cornellà

Long before La Masia, Gill was already visible and standing out on a soccer pitch.

In Colorado, as a 9-year-old, video shows him at the Soccer IQ Academy. He was comfortable on the ball, scanning the field, already playing beyond his age.

This matters because his pathway did not begin with a European scout. It began with early technical promise, developed in the United States, before his family ever left the country.

“My parents moved my family to Spain for work when I was ten years old,” Gill would later say.

This was not a football move. It was a family relocation that created an opportunity, and Gill was talented enough to turn it into the beginning of a career.

After arriving in Spain, Gill joined UE Cornellà in 2017. That step mattered because Cornellà is not a glamour club. It is a development club.

Founded in 1951 and based in Cornellà de Llobregat, the club has spent most of its history in Spain’s regional and lower national divisions, building its identity not on trophies but on training and development.

Its youth system fields dozens of teams across age groups and regularly competes against professional academies such as Barcelona and Espanyol. For many young players in Catalonia, Cornellà is where elite potential is tested.

Not protected. Tested.

It is a club that has long served as a launching point into elite environments, a bridge between local football and the highest levels of the Spanish academy system.

One of its most famous alumni is Jordi Alba, who passed through Cornellà before beginning his own rise toward the top of European football and later ending his career last year with an MLS Cup in Miami.

For young players in the region, that pathway is well understood. Cornellà is often the proving ground. For Gill, it became exactly that.

One year later, in 2018, FC Barcelona signed him into La Masia.

That is a filter moment. Very few American players enter Barcelona’s academy at that age. Fewer still stay. Gill did not just stay. He adapted quickly.

In the 2018–19 season, his first year inside the system, he was named to the La Masia Best XI, an early signal that he was not just a project, but one of the top performers in his cohort.

Inside Barcelona’s youth structure, he was already being trusted.

How He Was Being Developed

By 2021–22, Gill’s profile inside the academy was becoming clear.

He was not being developed as a single-role specialist.

One observer from that season wrote, using his middle name, which was common in Spanish reports:

“Adrian Simon has played in multiple positions this season, midfielder, right-back and today he is playing at left-back, and he is doing very well there.”

That is not casual rotation.

At La Masia, positional movement is reserved for players who:

• Understand spatial responsibility

• Can read the game from multiple reference points

• Are trusted to solve problems

Around the same time, external scouts described him this way:

“One of the best midfielders in La Masia in my opinion. Very mature and intelligent. Great first contact with the ball, field overview, balance, technique. He also has a strong shot from a distance. This season, still without a goal, but has a few assists.”

Gill was being shaped as a complete player, someone valued for how he organizes play and reads the game, not how often he showed up on the stat sheet.

In 2022, Barcelona signed Gill to his first professional contract. In that same year, he articulated his ambition with unusual clarity.

“My ambition is to break into the first team at Barça and play for the United States at the 2026 World Cup.”

This was a player operating inside a multi-year development plan, not drifting through an academy.

By 2023, Gill was getting closer. He trained with Barcelona’s first team during an international window. He was named to the UEFA Youth League roster, the competition Barcelona reserves for the academy players closest to the professional threshold. He was playing between Barcelona B and the U-19s.

Then, in September 2023, everything stopped when Gill tore his ACL in training.

The timing was awful. It came at the exact point he had broken into first-team sessions and continental competition.

For many players, that ends trajectories.

For Gill, Barcelona did something important. They extended his contract through 2026. They invested in the rehabilitation. They did not just move on.

In August 2024, nearly a full year later, he returned to competitive action with Barcelona’s U-19s.

He was not rushed. He was not immediately sent on loan. He was reintegrated inside the academy first.

In a January 2025 ESPN profile, Gill appeared alongside fellow Americans Diego Kochen and Pedro Soma as part of a small U.S. cohort at La Masia trying to follow pathways like Lamine Yamal.

He was no longer the breakout. He was the player rebuilding.

At the beginning of the current Spanish season, he returned to Cornellà on loan to regain full match rhythm and continuity.

Leaving Barcelona, With Intention

When Gill made the decision to leave Spain, he framed it as a chapter closing.

“For the last 7 years I have been able to call FC Barcelona my home… It’s with a heavy heart that I leave, but I know that I will take what I’ve learned here everywhere in life.”

For Atlanta United, this may not be a headline signing, but it is very clearly a process signing.

Chris Henderson is not bringing in a finished product.

He is investing in:

• A player trained inside elite positional systems

• A midfielder educated across multiple roles

• Someone whose first-team window was interrupted by injury, not by ability

• A profile built for 2027, 2028, and 2029, not just 2026

Gill could earn opportunities in Atlanta quickly but he does not have to arrive as an immediate solution. This move is about building a developmental spine inside the club with a talented player who can grow over time.

Gill does not arrive as a savior. He arrives as a project the club is willing to invest in.

The Bigger Picture

In isolation, Adrian Gill is a quiet signing. In context, he is a case study.

An American who:

• Emerged at age 9

• Moved continents at 10

• Entered La Masia at 12

• Made Best XI at 13

• Signed a professional contract at 16

• Trained with the first team at 18

• Tore his ACL at the door of opportunity

• Rebuilt for two years

• And now restarts in MLS at 20

This is not a shortcut career, it is a long one. And in many ways, it is just getting started.

Gill’s success in Atlanta will not be measured this spring.

It will be measured in whether, three years from now, Atlanta United has another player who arrived young, learned patiently, applied what he learned at La Masia, and turned elite education into professional production.

That is what Atlanta United is investing in with this move.

It is an investment that tells you a great deal about how this club now thinks about its future with Chris Henderson calling the shots.

Atlanta might not be the beginning of Adrian Gill’s career, but it is the next chapter in what will hopefully be a very long one.