In sheer statistical terms, Atlanta United’s fanbase usually ranks as the biggest in MLS, with the league’s top home attendance numbers, hefty merchandise sales and prominent visibility in their region and beyond. Combine that with ambitious spending and an impressive trophy collection for a club in just their eighth year of play and you have most of the trappings of the proverbial ‘big club’ environment.
As desirable as most of this is, it inevitably raises the temperature of the spotlight trained on Gonzalo Pineda. The Five Stripes’ head coach is under particular scrutiny as he begins his third full season in charge, with a sense of urgency to consolidate the progress made in 2023 and take advantage of Thiago Almada’s excellence before the young playmaker potentially makes his much-speculated move abroad.
Not everyone in peach country believes Pineda is the person for this job. Among other things, he’s been called “a divisive figure” among supporters, slated in the media for “his perceived lack of tactical acumen” and “disjointed” performances on his watch, and supposedly often “bailed out” by Almada’s individual excellence. Scan social media platforms and you will find a small but vocal #PinedaOut sentiment among Atlanta’s ‘17s,’ while some pundits have ranked him at or near the top of their MLS managerial ‘hot seat’ lists.
Perspective under pressure
Don’t try to tell Pineda any of this adds up to any extra burden on his shoulders, however.
“I mean, let's describe the pressure I get. What is the pressure? I'm going to be out of a job?” the former Mexico international told MLSsoccer.com in a one-on-one conversation during ATL’s preseason camp in Miami last month. “Yeah, maybe. So it happens, it happens everywhere in the world. Other than that, the pressure is more inner pressure, and the pressure that we as coaches have; we hear this clock we put in ourselves every day. That's the real pressure we get.”
Managers tend to be treated as disposable goods in Pineda’s homeland. He saw as much across a glittering playing career marked by World Cup, Copa América and Confederations Cup exploits for El Tri and several trophies with Pumas UNAM, Chivas Guadalajara and other clubs of note. Almost exactly a decade ago that career took him to the United States, presenting new lessons and perspectives that give him further reason to live in, and appreciate, the present.
“But if you compare the pressure of, I would say this, of an immigrant crossing the river without papers,” he continued, “because in Mexico, they didn't have food for their kids, and they're coming here for a future and begging for a job, and sometimes they are the worst jobs possible, right? And you have to feed your family back in Mexico without seeing them, probably, for the rest of your life?
“Those are problems. Those are stressful moments. I have the pleasure of doing what I love to do, which is first, playing football then after that, coaching football, to be in a great organization with great people, with great players, to be able to put my signature in this club and they can play the way I want. So I would say I'm far from being pressed by anything.”
Pineda's path to MLS
None of this was part of the plan when Pineda first touched down Stateside. A sports hernia and an ensuing lengthy recovery process had left him out of contract at age 31, with doubts about his prospects for a return to the pitch – including a few in his own head.
“I believe in God, I believe in God's plans. And I feel like this was God's plan since a long time ago,” he explained. “I got an injury and it was bad timing, it was at the end of my contract. So then I had six months without a job, and I had to pay for my surgery and my rehab in Mexico. So I did, and I was thinking already in maybe retiring and start to enjoy a couple of years with my family and do my licenses, and then start coaching at some point.”
In a potentially fateful case of sliding doors, a trial with Chicago Fire FC didn’t work out, but another at Seattle Sounders FC did. He won two more titles in two seasons with the Rave Green, then began his coaching journey at the right hand of Brian Schmetzer.
“First with Chicago Fire, they brought me to do a trial with them. But I felt again my injury, so I couldn't succeed. And then I did my surgery,” Pineda recalled. “Then in 2014, in January, I came as a trialist to Seattle, and I said, 'Yeah, let's give it the last chance, and if that works, let's do it.' And yeah, it worked.
“So what was a one-year adventure, now we're 10 years later, I’m here as a head coach of one of the best clubs in the MLS. So it happened suddenly, it happened very fast. But it was a great, great accident in my career that football and God brought me to this position. Now I'm very, very grateful to the country and to the MLS for this opportunity – changed my life.”
One of six Latino head coaches in MLS, Pineda sees what he and his fellow Mexican-Americans contribute to American life in soccer and beyond, as well as the suffering so many of his compatriots have endured. He steers clear of easy sloganeering, however, with a nuanced take when asked about his own experiences and perceptions of bigotry.
“Yes, I see it of course, and I feel sorry for my people when they have to go through things that probably no one should have to. But at the same time,” he said, “how we in Mexico, in Oaxaca, in Chiapas, how we treat people from Guatemala. I will say that yeah, it's tough. It is hard to see just as a human person around the world, the problems they're having now – there's war in another part of the world, that's suffering. Any human being that is dead because of someone else is bad.
“Of course I'm Mexican, I’m a proud Mexican, and I hope my people shouldn't have to live what they have to live, or experience what they are experiencing at times. But it happens around the world and all of those are sad to me. I don't make a difference between Mexicans and Guatemalans and Colombians, and even Americans at times, right? We can be here in this country also divided a little bit.”
Getting a full deck
Pineda’s determination to stay grounded is all the more notable given this is reportedly the final year of his contract, and according to one of his bosses, the first season in which he leads a roster that is truly capable of competing with the league’s elite.
Listen closely, though, and you can almost hear the ticking of that insistent internal click he mentioned.
“What I told him all along was like, ‘Look, we owe you a team.’ And we didn't have a solid team where we felt really good about the starter at every position,” said Atlanta president and CEO Garth Lagerwey, who also worked with Pineda in Seattle, in a recent appearance on the Extratime podcast. “Now we do. So I think now it's much more a fairer measuring stick.
“And look, for any young coach, you got to step forward every year, right? Gonzo and I have known each other for a long time going back to Seattle. So there's a trust there. We'll have conversations and we’ll will be like ‘Hey, remember, you know on that team, and we did this?’ So there's a natural kind of chemistry there. But now we got to go out and we got to win.”
ATLUTD haven’t won an Audi MLS Cup Playoffs series since 2019, as Lagerwey took pains to note, and this year’s Eastern Conference is a murderers’ row of talented contenders. Even if the most consequential league games tend to arrive in the season’s stretch run, with seven of those adversaries now participating in the Concacaf Champions Cup, Lagerwey is keen to make early ground while they’re distracted with continental competition.
This makes Saturday’s home opener vs. the New England Revolution weightier than the March 9 dateline (7:30 pm ET | MLS Season Pass) might otherwise suggest.
“My first year of contract, my last year contract, doesn't matter. I'm trying to enjoy every day, because it's a great opportunity that we have to do what we love to do. I don't see the point of putting pressure on me more than the one I have for getting the standard that we set for ourselves,” Pineda maintained. “We set the standard in the league. We set the standard here internally, among ourselves in every little thing: being on time to lunch, saying please and thank you to people for things – how we behave, how we treat others, all those standards have to be the best.”
Prepping Almada for the big move
Yet there’s often a catch at this level, and Pineda’s comes attached to his most dangerous weapon. Almada is widely rated as MLS’s most talented youngster, already a World Cup winner with Argentina, affixed with a transfer value somewhere around $30 million by the club. The Five Stripes are more or less built around him and part of Pineda’s job is to showcase him for European suitors – yet he and his staff must also be prepared to lose him at any moment once the summer transfer window opens.
It’s still a win-win to Pineda.
“We're extremely happy with Thiago. If he could stay more, great for us. If he could go, it’s great for him,” said the 41-year-old. “Either way, we will be very happy. I would say that no matter what happens, we're going to have a very good ending to this story.
“He's worth it. He is going to match that value,” he added of Almada’s lofty price tag. “He's extremely talented. And if he continues with his development as a person and maturity, because I think he's getting a bit more maturity compared to when he first got here, that means also taking more responsibility in the team and taking also the attacking side of the ball, but also the defensive side of the game, so he can get a little bit more complete in terms of the demands that he's going get in Europe.”
Here Pineda cracked a smile.
“You know, there were a lot of rumors about Atlético Madrid,” he said. “I'm sure if he doesn't sprint back after an action, with Cholo Simeone, it’s straight to the bench. So we need to help him in that mission of what he needs to get into the big, big clubs. The demands are extremely high, so he needs to match those demands in order to be attractive for some of those clubs to pay that amount of money.”
Transfer market strategy
Whatever happens with Almada, it’s quite conceivable that he could be the last in Atlanta’s string of high-potential, high-priced South American flip projects dating back to the club’s 2017 debut. Lagerway’s arrival has coincided with a marked shift from that model towards a more pragmatic calculation of risk, reward and reliability with acquisitions.
“The philosophy of the club was young, talented players like Thiago, like [Miguel] Almirón, to sell them to Europe,” said Pineda. “Now we kind of changed or evolved to a different version, where we want players in their primes, from Europe, most of them. So now the model changed a little bit. But the vision is the same – to succeed and to be a protagonist in the season, to achieve as many trophies as we can per year, and to build this type of team that has a legacy in MLS.
“If you sign a player that has 20 games in a first division in South America, you don't know. Of course, if you have the eye for talent, yes, you may succeed, but it's more difficult because you have less information,” he added. “How are they going to respond in adversity, how they're responding in other countries, how they're going to respond to different weather, not seeing their families, the stress, different level. So it’s more uncertainty.”
Analytics data now factors in more heavily, as does the greater value to be gained when shopping for mid- or late-20s players rather than youngsters. Pineda reels off several of Atlanta’s most recent transfers to make the point.
“Now that we collect the data from Xande \[Silva\], from Tristan \[Muyumba\], from Bartosz \[Slisz\], from Stian \[Gregersen\], from all of them, you have more than 150 games per player and they've been playing, most of them, in multiple leagues,” he explained. “We have information from former coaches, former players, people that know them. So we know the character of players at a high level. So probably you're not gambling that much with those types of players.”
Helping make MLS history
Pineda’s knowledge and enthusiasm are palpable on topics like these, so much so that he’s easy to forget this is still his first head coaching job. Despite his declaration that he never intended to start this next chapter of his soccer life in MLS, he sounds fascinated by its particular landscape, like a curious transplant still learning new facets all the time.
“Since I'm here, for example, in 2014, most of the teams play 4-4-2, direct ball, everything was transitional, set pieces. Most of the teams were tactically the same – it was kind of boring, it was kind of the same tactics, both teams. Nowadays, we can have three DPs, six, seven TAMs, U22 Initiatives and Young DPs,” he said.
“The number of facilities, stadiums, specifically for soccer built, it is just a fantastic growth of the league. Like, I don't see that in any other league in the world. And it's very evident how much MLS has progressed in a very short amount of time. The best part of it is that we're doing kind of step by step, we're not trying to do three steps at a time and trying to jump and maybe kill the league economically.”
All that said, he, like many others, is eager to witness the next steps forward.
“I think the future for MLS is after the [2026] World Cup. I think the salary cap, has to increase a bit more, in order to attract a couple more DPs, and hopefully that raises the level even more,” he said. “The next step is that we as clubs, we don't have so many opportunities to buy players but we cannot because of the salary cap. And that's something that is restraining us from bringing better players and having a better product in the field. I would say that will be the next step, in my opinion.
“Apple TV will help a lot on that, I think that’s a great idea having Apple TV, so easy to use, so easy, so practical for all the fans,” he added. “Hopefully that goes well and we can have an MLS in two, three years that is expanded, that on the qualitative side just raises the level.”
