Face it, watching goal-starved Atlanta United last season was a chore. Prisoners of the pandemic may have been savagely hungry for something, anything, to view. But not this, the C-SPAN of sports programming that is scoreless and losing soccer.
Case in point: Josef Martinez couldn’t/wouldn’t watch it. And who is more invested in Atlanta United than he? Martinez is the face of this franchise’s halcyon days, which was like the day before yesterday in sports geology but seems so much longer ago now. Still, laid low in the opening MLS game in Nashville (Feb. 29, 2020) by a torn ACL, he found he was not built to spectate. So, he looked away from the mess whenever he could.
“The first two games (after his injury) I watched,” Martinez said during his welcome-back Zoom news conference Friday. And he’d like you to know that for some of it he employed increasingly proficient English. Martinez is quite proud of the way he has absorbed the language over three-plus years here.
But after those two games, when MLS returned following a four-month coronavirus stoppage, he said, “I don’t watch anymore. One because it was hard for me, and I couldn’t be there to help. Another, I get mad, and I don’t like it when I get mad.
“I think I go two times to the stadium, but I think I prefer to stay home and watch anything else.”
Avoidance is no longer an option, as Martinez, 27, is back with the lads, booting the ball around in training and working to rediscover his former goal-scoring self.
Yeah, that’s significant. You think the Braves might be a little anxious to be getting Freddie Freeman back after a year-long injury absence? Or the Falcons would be sweating Matt Ryan’s return to camp following a season on the shelf? What would the Hawks’ Trae Young withdrawal be like over the course of a calendar year?
Martinez is exactly that sort of presence on an MLS scale. A founding player, he gave Atlanta United its on-field personality and taught this city the value of a properly celebrated goal. From the technicolor hair down, he possesses an abundance of on-field charisma, even for someone who can’t use his hands. More important, the man has this knack for kicking a small ball into a large net. In the team’s 2018 championship season, he was the league MVP and set the MLS single-season goal-scoring record of 31, since broken. All told, he has scored 77 goals in 83 MLS games, just a ridiculous pace.
And, man, does Atlanta United badly need that kind of ridiculous back.
Last season without him, it fell into ruin, going 6-13-4. Worse yet, it lost in numbing fashion, scoring the second fewest goals in the league (23).
So, naturally, there’s a great deal of hope riding on Martinez’s full and healthy return. There’s a new coach in town, Gabriel Heinze replacing Frank de Boer. And with the change comes a potential marriage of styles between fellow South Americans similar to the one struck between Martinez and his first Atlanta United coach, Tata Martino.
Martinez’s first impression of the new coach: He’s tough. “I don’t know if we’ll win or not, but we run a lot. And we fight a lot,” he said with a smile.
Whoever is leading the band, Atlanta United just has to be a lot better off with Martinez on the field than it was with him back home watching Netflix. As goalkeeper Brad Guzan put it, “When Joe’s on the field, his name alone on a team sheet is going to strike fear in any opposition because of what he’s done in the past.
“To see him out there is obviously great, from a personal standpoint. It’s fantastic to see the hard work that he’s put in over the last many months, the dedication he has shown to the club and the team. And to see him out there doing what he loves, it puts a smile on your face.”
His return also should mean the kind of leadership a largely reconstructed team requires.
“You got one voice on one side of the field and one voice on the other side of the field,” Guzan said of himself and his striker working in front of the opponent’s goal. “That’s the way he plays. We talked about last year when he wasn’t on the field how we missed that. That’s an aspect he probably doesn’t get as much credit as he should in terms of demanding more from other players around him.”
There obviously will be mental hurdles for Martinez to clear before returning to his old ways. His knee required multiple procedures, he said, first to repair the torn ligament and then to clean up scar tissue and a resulting infection. There were times he grew so depressed he considered retirement.
“The thing about playing again was it was a little more complicated infection. After a second procedure, I had three in five days. I was very tired and in pain and it was tough,” Martinez said, shifting from English to Spanish (this part interpreted). “But then I got out of the hospital and things went well. I could walk and recover my (atrophied) muscle, and it passed.”
There is no certainty what his readiness will be when Atlanta United opens its MLS season April 17 in Orlando. For as accustomed as we have become to players returning full-bore after knee surgery, it remains as much a mental rehab as a physical one. Take nothing for granted.
As he trains now, Martinez finds himself questioning whether he really wants to slide-tackle into a teammate. Is it worth it – maybe not just yet. And after a year away from competition, his timing and instincts are not yet reset.
“The most difficult thing was returning to feel like a soccer player,” he said Friday, through an interpreter. “The first days that I started to touch the ball were tough. They are still tough. It’s what I had to deal with. I’m not the first or last person who has had this injury. I’ve cried many times, even last week when I had my first scrimmage. And when I go out to train, I feel nostalgic because they were tough days, but you have to continue.
“But we’re close. Hopefully.”
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