Atletico Dallas: 2027 USL expansion team will target European stars, says head coach

Tom Weber

• Updated: 28 Feb 2026 12:18 CST
• 8 min read

News

Atletico Dallas head coach Peter Luccin says that he will heavily target the French market for player recruitment as he tries to assemble the club's first roster.

Atletico are the newest professional team in the Dallas area, having been officially founded in November 2024. The club will enter the second-tier USL Championship next year, along with Santa Barbara Sky FC and potentially a new team in Reno, which has been without a pro soccer outfit since 2020.

The team are currently in the process of building a new state-of-the-art training facility, and they will play their home games in the historic Cotton Bowl. Former PSG and Atletico Madrid midfielder Peter Luccin has been named the club's inaugural head coach.

Luccin was an obvious appointment for Atletico after a lengthy spell at FC Dallas. Initially a player for the MLS franchise, the 46-year-old worked as an academy, assistant and even interim head coach over the past decade. He also has experience building his own academy from the ground up.

The Frenchman's connection with football in the Dallas area is second to none. His oldest son plays for FC Dallas' MLS Next Pro side, North Texas, while his younger son plays for the club's U15s.

Luccin: Atletico Dallas could sign Ligue 1 players

In a lengthy interview with Foot Mercato, Luccin has outlined his ambitions for Atletico Dallas. He says that he will look to the French market to fill his club's eight permitted foreigner spots, potentially even signing players from Ligue 1.

"We have all of 2026 to build the team," Luccin explained. "Currently, there are zero players. My role is to start screening players and contacting teams that might be interested in loaning their players. For 2027, the club wants to take it slow and gradually build momentum.

"Personally, I want to enter the competition to win it. The staff's objectives will be high. For the club, there's no pressure. They want to build things up calmly and confidently. From 2028 onwards, with the relegation-promotion system, we'll have to be at our best."

"I'm currently talking with players whose contracts are expiring," he added. "We could target players from Ligue 2. Depending on our financial resources, we might even have Ligue 1 players who feel they're nearing the end of their careers and would like to experience the American dream.

"But for those kinds of players, we're really looking for specific profiles. Then there are also players from the National. The pool of targets is wide. We know there are some players we won't be able to get, but there are others who are at a more difficult point in their careers, and it will be easier for us to bring them over with the opportunity to experience America, to learn about a different culture."

Luccin alludes to the fact that USL will look to implement promotion and relegation, potentially as early as 2027, although more likely in 2028 with the launch of its new Division I league, the USL Premier. He believes that, if done correctly, it could be a game-changer for soccer in the US.

"Everyone says the USL can be a second division, but here, we're talking more about a parallel league because it comes from a different organisation. That's why they want to differentiate themselves [from MLS]. That's why they're always coming up with new ideas. With this system, the pressure will be completely different. This pressure won't just be on the players, but also on the fans. They'll feel it."

The task to build a club and roster from scratch is not a daunting one for Luccin. On the contrary, it was precisely this freedom that prompted him to take the Atletico Dallas job in the first place.

"Actually, I've been talking with the sporting director and even the president of this new club for six months," he revealed. "During those six months, he was more or less asking for my opinion and a kind of 'help,' so to speak, on how to set up a club from a sporting rather than an administrative perspective.

"Because, well, there are things I could help with on the administrative side, but it's not really my area of ​​expertise. It was mainly about the youth academy, building the staff, partnerships with clubs -something we're currently working on - and other things. It's really about building our network, you could say.

"But at the same time, my agent was talking with MLS teams, so it's true that initially, I was more focused on MLS because I came from MLS. I'd been in MLS for eight years, six as an assistant coach and then six months as an interim head coach. So we were talking, but what happened was that what Atletico Dallas more or less gave me was the freedom to really create my own staff, to sign players, to help develop the academy.

"All of that was really important to me because if you go to a team and your hands are more or less tied... I was saying to my agent that I preferred to go to Atletico Dallas because they really showed me they wanted me and gave me more or less the freedom to be involved in several areas.

"It's not scary. I'm used to this system in MLS. There's a club like San Diego that entered the league doing pretty much the same thing. The only difference in MLS is that they had the right to choose one player per team. That is to say, all MLS teams had the right to protect about 10 players, and from there, San Diego could go to any franchise and take a player.

"So it was a bit easier because they could quickly have a roster of 10 to 15 players. For us, that doesn't exist. But on the other hand, what's good is that the league is open. So if we want to make an offer to any player in the USL, there's no problem. We're free to take eight foreign players.

"There are also foreign players who have a green card and who therefore don't count towards this foreign player quota. That's why I travel so often. As a Frenchman, the French market interests me greatly. The Spanish market, too, and we're also involved in the South American market."

However, while Luccin is clearly excited about this challenge, there are major issues that USL and Atletico will have to navigate ahead of 2027. The league's Collective Bargaining Agreement with the players' union expired on 31 December.

Despite 18 months of tedious negotiations, there is still no new agreement in place. As a result, the USL Players' Association gave authorisation for a strike on Friday, just a week before the new season is slated to kick off.

Professional standards are the main area of contention, and there appears to be a gulf between USL and the USLPA in terms of financial expectations. In early December, it was revealed that USL had proposed a minimum compensation for its new Premier division of just over half of what players make in MLS.

Naturally, the reaction to this revelation was overwhelmingly negative. In general, the whole process has reflected badly on USL, even if CBA standoffs are nothing out of the ordinary in American sports. Just a few years ago, MLS's referees went on strike.

A league can function without qualified referees - albeit poorly, as MLS showed - but it can't function without players. USL needs to get its ducks in a row on this issue before it can look ahead to 2027 and beyond.

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