Gerardo Martino has it knocked in Atlanta.
The town loves him. His team, Atlanta United, is on to the MLS conference finals in just its second year of existence. The very team he midwifed – no, more than that, the franchise that bears strands of his competitive DNA – has just been named the most valuable property in the league by Forbes. And to think it was all just a concept when he was hired in September 2016.
It doesn’t seem to matter whether Martino speaks the native language – be that either English or Southern. The Argentine’s got the bona fides and the charisma to bridge that. And the world’s longest honeymoon just drags on and on between Atlanta and the head coach of its soccer team.
Witness the huge banner that was unfurled at Mercedes-Benz before Atlanta United’s playoff elimination of New York City FC on Sunday. It was a depiction of Martino commissioned by Atlanta United’s supporters groups, entitled El Tata, that momentarily dominated one end zone of the stadium. Brian Snitker’s on a roll, too, but nobody has broken out any three-story likenesses of the Braves manager lately.
“That was fantastic,” Atlanta United’s team president Darren Eales said. “Just showed the great connection Tata and the team has established with our fans.”
Not even the social-media trolls seem all that interested in trying to ruin Martino’s day. How much better could any manager or coach have it?
And, yet, the clock is ticking on Tata’s Atlanta odyssey. The end is near, even though the beginning seems like it was just the day before yesterday.
When the Five Stripes’ season is over – be that with the home-and-away with the New York Red Bulls that begins in a week, or the Dec. 8 MLS Cup – so is Martino’s stay here. Like a circus ringmaster, he must be moving on. While he’s not saying it, everyone else is saying that he’s bound for Mexico to coach its national team.
If you think it odd that a head coach who legitimately has it knocked would leave the best and rarest kind of set-up, you are not alone.
This was Martino on Friday, daring to drop the game face and be reflective for a moment: “The strange thing of all of this is that we go all over the world looking for respect and to find our place. But even when we find it, we still prefer to leave.”
Respect. That is a fundamental word for Martino. Some may call what he and the United fans share affection. Martino calls it respect. It is because all parties have come to that understanding it is possible to hear his voice catch for just a moment or note a little dew around the eyes when he speaks about what he’ll be leaving behind here in Atlanta.
“Yeah, I have been emotional,” he answered, through the team communications coordinator and interpreter Justin Veldhuis, “especially because that’s how I feel when people respect me. And here it has been nothing but respect.
“And in four days I’m turning 56 – so I get more emotional than I used to.”
Really, it should come as no surprise that Martino is leaving so soon. Movement has been the one constant of his career. He has managed a succession of club teams in his native Argentina and Paraguay, his hometown team for whom he starred as a player (Newell’s Old Boys), gone to a big stage in Spain (Barcelona), and coached the national teams of Paraguay and Argentina. But never staying anywhere longer than three years.
To understand the why of it, you have to try to understand someone this restless for the next challenge, even someone who is crossing over into the far half of his 50s. It’s as if there were some invisible hand, always pulling him in another direction.
It’s not money, Martino insists, despite reports that Mexico is prepared to make it rain pesos to get him.
“They are challenges that exceed just winning or losing and those kinds of situations are always attractive for me,” Martino said. “When you arrive somewhere new, the first thing people say is that the coaching change was just about more money. But in reality, money has never been a priority for me.”
Credit: Curtis Compton
Credit: Curtis Compton
Martino went to his old club in Argentina as it faced relegation to a lower-level league and brought back old glories. He went to Paraguay and helped a small nation to a big stage (the quarterfinals of the 2010 World Cup). The thought of getting a coach of his stature to come to Atlanta to lead a start-up project was almost on the level of a joke at first, Eales said. But it took a coach with a sort of rock-climber’s appetite for the next sheer wall to see it as a worthy opportunity.
“To start from scratch to help forge an identity really resonated with Tata,” Eales said.
“That’s part of the close connection – he has been there from the start, built from no training ground, no stadium to 53,000 average crowds. He established the way that we play, the fact that we scored 70 goals both seasons. How he built it from scratch has built not only a real sense of pride but a sense of family,” United’s president said.
And, now, the same curiosity that brought him to Atlanta is tearing him away.
Martino likens his Atlanta experience most to the one he had in Paraguay. “Those are two countries where people didn’t recognize me before and I had to go there, and people had to get to know me and my work,” he said. “Here it wasn’t just about signing players and installing an idea about play on the field, but it also was about convincing fans Atlanta United was a team worth supporting.”
That Martino has been good for Atlanta is undeniable.
“I think that people understand that Tata had a big role on this team from the beginning,” team captain Michael Parkhurst said. “Not only for what he’s done on the field and the product we’re able to bring on a weekly basis and the results,” Parkhurst said, “but also the culture he created from Day One while bringing in South American talent.”
That Atlanta has been good for Martino is something he’ll have pack and take with him to the next stop.
“People who have been in soccer for a lifetime, we tend to focus just on winning and losing and how good we are when we win and how bad we are when we lose,” he said. “Sometimes you lose sight of the human nature of it. In Atlanta, you realize there is a link between the club and all the fans, the human aspect of everything. The fans feel connected to the team.”|
Asked if he recognized the name Bobby Cox, Martino at first looked a little puzzled.
Prompted that the Braves Cox was the one manager who brought a championship to Atlanta, he quickly recovered.
“Oh, 1995,” he said, knowingly.
So, what would it mean to join that company – add the 1968 NASL champion Atlanta Chiefs and Phil Woosnam to the list if you like – and bring the city a title?
It won’t be easy – up next are the Red Bulls, who have the best record in MLS, beating Atlanta United badly twice to get there. But it would be poetic.
“It would be a reason for all the fans in the city of Atlanta to feel happy and proud about a team,” Martino said.
And, think about one last unique achievement Martino could pull off, if he can make the time before shipping out for the next test. For how many head coaches get a parade when they leave Atlanta?
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