I'd be interested to know the target audience for the content. I know it's an American website, but will the content be aimed specifically at American "soccer" fans, or will it be more global in nature? From my experience (British but living in the US), I find that American coverage e.g. NBC's matchday broadcasts and Rory Smith in the NYT, i.e. coverage aimed at the American market, is sometimes a little dumbed down, perhaps based on an assumption that American soccer fans may be newer to the game and less knowledgeable. That's just the perception I have, but I find it noticeable in the explanatory style of some of the analysis.
I find most football journalism pretty generic to be honest. Every writer desperately trying to meet impossible deadlines in an insta-clickbait environment. Quality is low, with a few exceptions, e.g. Daniel Taylor's pieces on paedophilia. And for whatever reason, twitter seems to have lulled some writers into believing that they're an important part of the story. As much as we love football, there is rarely a topic of such profundity that demands high quality journalism (again, the paedophilia story is a rare exception). Mostly, football is about match reports, transfer speculation, light tactical analysis, and the odd human interest story. It's not rocket science. So it will also be interesting to see if The Athletic's business model enables writers to be less reactionary and less clickbaity -- an HBO or a Netflix effectively. If the idea is that people will pay to read the same journalists writing in the same style, then I think they're doomed to failure. It has to provide something more, something different. I don't know what that is or what that will look like, but I guess we'll find out.