Luiz Araujo finds joy — and hopefully the net next

First the soft thump of a foot kicking a soccer ball is heard.

And then comes the cackle. It sounds like an iteration of the Joker but without the malice.

Luiz Araujo is enjoying himself at Atlanta United.

The laughter came during a free kick competition held by some of the players after Thursday’s training sessions. The players had to get the ball around or over a wall and score on goalkeeper Alec Kann.

Asked if he won, Araujo confidently says yes. Four out of eight scored. Every time the ball hit the net came that needling laugh, done to push his teammate’s buttons, according to Araujo.

“This is something I love to do,” he said. “Every child’s dream is to be a professional footballer. I’m a footballer. So everything I have in my life right now is thanks to football so I’m giving my happiness back to to football and yeah, this is who I am and, and this is my job and I love doing it.”

Atlanta United needs Araujo, signed as a Designated Player after helping Lille win France’s Ligue 1 and qualify for the UEFA Champions League, to keep playing with that unfiltered joy.

Araujo has yet to score in three games — something he is aware of but thinks may happen on Friday against Orlando at Mercedes-Benz Stadium because he has come close several times — but his production will likely mean the difference between the team making the postseason or failing to qualify for the second consecutive season.

Atlanta United has 27 points from 22 games and is in ninth place in the Eastern Conference. The Five Stripes trail D.C. United by three points for the final playoff spot. The team is four points behind sixth-place Montreal and five points behind fifth-place Philadelphia.

Getting Araujo going, whether from a free kick, a tap-in or a long shot, would go a long way to making up that difference.

To that end, the team has spent a lot of the past two weeks on working patters of play and trying to get the attacking players into the best spots to score. It’s something that manager Gonzalo Pineda said was needed, particularly to give Araujo options when he has the ball.

Brooks Lennon, who plays fullback or wing back on the same side, right, of the formation as Araujo, said the work is going well.

“Luiz is is a guy that loves to face someone up one v one and he should do that when he’s one v one,” Lennon said. “But when he has guys around him, you know, he needs support from whether it’s the (central midfielder) or the (attacking midfielder) coming in supporting him and helping him. Yeah, he’s he’s been working on all that and we’re excited to see him on Friday.”

Araujo said his acclimation off the field to a new country has been aided by teammate Matheus Rossetto and fitness coach Ricardo Oliveira.

On the field, he said MLS is very similar to playing in France: very physical, very intense and very fast.

“I hope I can get on the scoresheet to show who I am in this league,” he said.

And then, you may hear that laugh.

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