Next stop for MARTA soccer fields is the West End station

Futbol hoopla in Atlanta is hardly relegated to Mercedes-Benz Stadium when Five Stripes are playing.

Two years ago, downtown’s Five Points MARTA Station made waves by opening a mini soccer pitch—heralded as the world’s first soccer field in a transit station.

Last month, the City of Atlanta and US Soccer Foundation teamed to open a mini-pitch at Anderson Park, just north of Westview Cemetery. It’s the first of nine new soccer fields planned for public use, mostly south and west of downtown, officials recently told Curbed Atlanta.

Come next month, soccer’s set to make a visible splash in West End.

The Atlanta United Foundation and city officials announced today a collaboration with Soccer in the Streets and MARTA to expand the “Station Soccer” program to the West End station, where two new pitches will be bisected by the transit line itself.

Atlanta’s Station Soccer is described as “the world’s first network of soccer fields inside the perimeter of major transit stations.”

Officially called “Station Soccer—West End,” the new fields will be unveiled the afternoon of Sept. 8, following a tournament at the Five Points location.

Such projects “help our neighborhoods thrive and restore pride in underdeveloped areas of the city,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said in a prepared statement. MARTA CEO Jeff Parker called the Station Soccer pilot program at Five Points Station “a huge success” in the same release.

For all involved, it sounds like a gooaaaaaal!!!