Parchman: Tata Martino has changed MLS coaching forever By Will Parchman Jun 7, 2018 27 It is easy enough to picture it, a scene painted in the soupy colors of a weekday morning in the carpeted halls of a nameless American airport. A man in a red and black Adidas tracksuit, his age showing around his waist and his temples, glides across the carpet. It is amazing you don’t see him, but he’s anonymous here, a simple face among many others. His shirt under his collar reads GM, initials few around him save his own teammates would know. In South America he has a different name, a different profile, a different aura altogether. El Tata. Atlanta United coach Tata Martino exists simultaneously above and below the visible plane of American sports stardom. On the American sporting Richter Scale, his decision in 2016 to become the manager of the MLS team registered somewhere in the vicinity of a low-level NBA offseason trade. That Atlanta had landed someone who had coached Lionel Messi at both FC Barcelona andthe Argentine national team did not penetrate the media as the major accomplishment it was. And yet there has never been a more seismic hiring in MLS history, a point now crystal in its clarity. Martino has changed things here, probably forever, and it’s worth studying exactly what has happened since he arrived. Martino was introduced as Atlanta United’s first head coach on September 27, 2016, scarcely fewer than six months before the team played its first match. Argentine Hector Villalba, then 21, had signed as a young designated player about two months before Martino’s arrival. Shortly after Martino arrived, thanks in part to the foundation laid by general manager Carlos Bocanegra and president Darren Eales, things sped up. Quickly. First, and most notably, there was the arrival of Miguel Almiron. Less than two months after Martino was announced, Atlanta signed Almiron, who in the intervening season and a half has probably taken the mantle of league’s best player from Sebastian Giovinco and is certainly its best European prospect. Almiron is Paraguayan, and in a Players Tribune article I suggest you read, he mentions how, wide-eyed, he watched his country’s run to the quarterfinals of the 2010 World Cup with Martino as the head coach. So when Martino called him in late 2016, offering to bring him to Atlanta, this was Almiron’s wide-eyed response. “Coach,” he said, “it is such an honor that you’re even calling me. Of course I want to go to Atlanta with you.” “I didn’t know much about MLS,” he continued. “I didn’t know where Atlanta was. I didn’t know anything. But Tata was manager, and that was all I needed to know.” We will come back to this later. Leandro Gonzalez Pirez was next. A stalwart stand-up central defender, Pirez has been a mixed bag but remains a largely positive signing. A month after that, Josef Martinez arrived. Last weekend, Martinez tied the career MLS hat trick record in a scant 34 games, and he’s in pole position to be the league’s top scorer in 2018. After the conclusion of the 2017 season, another bombshell: Ezequiel Barco, a 19-year-old attacking midfielder Atlanta United broke the bank to sign. At $15 million, Barco became the most expensive transfer in the league’s 22-year history. Here it is worth noting three specific, connected things. There is Atlanta. There is Tata Martino. And there is South America. Almiron of course is Paraguayan and grew up watching Martino’s brand of high-press soccer. Barco, Pirez, and Villalba are all Argentine, like Martino. And, like Martino, the club shrewdly hired assistants who could woo young South Americans, inarguably the most coveted demographic in MLS scouting circles. Dario Sala and Jorge Theiler, Martino’s two assistants, are both Argentine. Sala has deep ties to MLS as a player, and Theiler is a former Argentina youth national team coach. They reach into both countries. There is more to Atlanta United’s unbelievable first 18 months as a professional club than this core of South Americans. The city itself was already a beautiful tapestry of soccer fanaticism. In 2016, the club shrewdly incorporated existing youth club Georgia United, which gave them immediate homegrown rights to the likes of George Bello, Andrew Carleton, and Chris Goslin before the senior team so much as kicked a ball. And Arthur Blank has been the model of what it means to be a spendy-but-smart MLS owner in 2018. In the middle of everything, unavoidably, is Martino. He is the sun around which this current team orbits. And now it is worth going back to Miguel Almiron. The cult of the coach can be difficult to see in U.S. professional sports. The restrictive movement allowed by the cap system means that players are often chasing max contracts offered by teams with money to spend, not the coaches at the head of those teams. And there is rarely a cultural component involved—most players are American, and the foreign-born players usually fall into the league of their sport because they are the world’s best. With a few notable if rare exceptions, the coach is often incidental. So it is significantly harder, or at least less natural, for Americans understand what Martino actually means to MLS in the context of what his reputation is literally bringing to the league. (The cult of personality and strong gravitational pull exerted by big-time recruiting college football and basketball coaches is close.) There are layers to player transfers, and each one is uniquely its own. But in a league like MLS, as Almiron has already told us, you need name brand recognition on the sideline. You need someone who transcends your city, your league, your country. You need a Tata. Zoom out, way out, and you’ll see what I mean. Barco commanded the largest inbound transfer fee in MLS history. Almiron, who joined from Argentine outfit Lanus, is the second largest, at $8 million. The next three, in order: Michael Bradley, Clint Dempsey, and Jozy Altidore. All three joined the league for, I hope you’ll agree, reasons beside the coach, or even team, who came calling. Martino has attracted the two largest transfers in MLS history, both of whom were 21 or under at the time of their signing and neither of whom had any real idea what MLS was about or even where Atlanta was on a map. This is how MLS grows. This, I should say, is how MLS thrives. And, surprisingly enough in today’s period of analytical growth, it is not simply Martino’s tactics that are at the vanguard. It is his cachet. MLS has never had a cult of coaching, or anything close. In reality, the league’s coaching has been poor compared to the growth of its player talent base. And yet that coaching foundation is far more important for the league’s growth than its player acquisition strategy. In the last three years, the league has managed to woo the two most important coaches in its history, in Martino and NYCFC’s Patrick Vieira. While Martino is in the twilight of his career, Vieira is in the dawn of his. Recently rumored to be French Ligue 1 club Nice’s next head coach, Vieira will almost certainly end up at the helm of a first division European side in the next few years. His reputation, along with the wealth of parent club Manchester City, has made NYCFC a similarly attractive destination for young, talented foreign players. This is where MLS is today. Nobody suggests the dialing down of youth development, but it is a plain fact that the league is sorely lacking in the sort of coaching acumen that draws the interest of foreign players. A quick glance down the sideline Martino shares on an average weekend is enough to understand how deep that chasm often is. The prognosis is simple but change will not be easy to achieve. It will take more coaches like Martino to grow the league beyond its current iteration, which is impressive in its own right. MLS is in a space where it cannot afford to be complacent. And if it is looking for the next plateau, then there is one recourse. We are now in the age of Tata. It would be wise of the rest of MLS to catch up. ^this has largely already happened, and it feels great.
YES!! Also, how in the fuck are the announcers not acknowledging he got immediately hurt on that header?
Columbus should have probably had a goal, they missed several good chances. Damn damn good win. Eat shit Crew.
He stayed in the game until the end of the half. Watch the video Fran posted, he collided with a defender on the header he scored on.
really thought Toronto could miss out on the post season entirely but Orlando is hotter garbage than we all thought
The pass from Miggy to Tito on his goal was beautiful. Nice road win. Four points on the road after back to back games against the top two teams trailing us in the table. I’ll take it. Also read we are now have a streak of 7 unbeaten on the road. So much better on the road this year.
Yeah, we were hot garbage on the road last year. Wish we could find a way to play Villalba more. Love him
New England should have been 3 and not 1. The SKC game probably ends differently without a Guzan red card.
Another Argentine Defensive Mid rumor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Remedi https://www.dirtysouthsoccer.com/20...erms-with-banfield-for-midfielder-eric-remedi
Week night. I bet it will fill in a bunch as people get through traffic and stop pregaming. Nonetheless I'm sure it won't be a huge crowd.
Some of these short passes we've attempted in and around the box are just unbelievably difficult. Real low percentage.
And come on, you have to pull the ball back on those two chances we just had. What a terrible shooting angle and so many players in the box.
USOC =/= Atlanta Standards announced attendance =/= actual attendancre It was spotty. At least first 15 mins of match but i know Marta westbound was having issues. Supporters section was as empty as I have seen. At best, lots of late arrivers.