Atlanta, Tata Martino preach process over quick fix for winless, success-starved club
Atlanta's Enea Mihaj reacts after a loss to the San Jose Earthquakes Stan Szeto / Imagn Images
Days before Atlanta United’s 2026 MLS season opener, Tata Martino wanted an explanation. Seated inside a small conference room at the club’s training ground, Martino pondered why pundits weren’t sold on his squad.
“What’s the rationale regarding this idea about the team?” he asked.
From the outside, there were questions about Atlanta’s overall talent and whether designated players Miguel Almirón, Aleksei Miranchuk and Emmanuel Latte Lath could coexist. The midfield needed an upgrade in character, and the back line, which already lacked speed, remained a work in progress. Atlanta is a team that looks and feels incomplete.
“It’s an interesting challenge,” Martino remarked after hearing how MLS experts, including The Athletic’s writers, felt about Atlanta’s potential in his first year back since leading the team to a 2018 MLS Cup win. “It’s clear that continuity gives (other clubs) an advantage,” he added. “We’re just starting to build something here, but I think we’re going to compete. I also agree that we’re not the favorites.”
Almirón, now the team’s captain, wasn’t bothered that the bar had been lowered, either.
“Personally, I always like to work in silence, with humility and sacrifice,” he told The Athletic days before the first game of the season. “I think it’s also good that people aren’t talking too much about us. We’re calm, we’re working. The first objective is to qualify for the playoffs — game by game.”
After a physically grueling preseason that included trips to Houston, Dallas and South Florida, Martino knew what he had and what the team lacked. He understood that there was still plenty of work to do, on and off the field, in order to change the fortunes of a struggling sporting project.
Despite those realities, Martino was optimistic heading into Atlanta’s season opener against FC Cincinnati on Feb. 21. Not because he would enter TQL Stadium with a finished footballing product, but because in the weeks prior, Martino had witnessed his players’ commitment to changing the narrative about their fragile mentalities.
“The first thing is to understand that in this process of building a team, we’re going to have good results and bad results,” Martino said before the season. “We need a team that fights from February 22nd through December 8th — not a team that fights for three months or four months. The fight is all year long. That is the main message.”
Three weeks into the season, however, Atlanta is winless. It has felt like a recurring bad dream for the club’s supporters. The lingering effects of the failed Gonzalo Pineda and Ronny Deila eras have scarred the psyches of Atlanta’s battered fanbase. What little trust they had in the club’s decision makers has been eroded.
Martino’s return was mostly celebrated in Atlanta. It was also rebuked as a desperate attempt to rekindle past success. One thing, though, is certain: Martino is not a miracle worker or a savior. Atlanta used to have enviable talent. Now it looks at LAFC, Inter Miami, Nashville and others as clubs with better recruitment strategies.
Away losses to Cincinnati and San Jose offered a mixed bag of conclusions about the state of the club. Against Cincinnati, Atlanta was tactically sound and physical but beaten by goals in the 80th and 90th minutes. A lethargic performance against San Jose, in which the team looked fatigued and void of any creative spark, resulted in another 2-0 loss.
On Saturday, Atlanta lost its home opener to a Real Salt Lake side that was missing several key starters. The 0-3-0 start is the first in the club’s 10-year existence. Yet, there was a significant improvement in the attack against RSL when compared to Atlanta’s first two games. Miranchuk scored twice in a 90-minute performance, albeit in a 3-2 defeat.
Almirón, who has appeared burdened at times with the club legend tag, was more purposeful on the night. Defensive frailty remains the team’s Achilles’ heel. And Latte Lath continues to be a shadow of the player signed from Middlesbrough for a reported $22 million transfer fee.
Chief soccer officer Chris Henderson traveled with the team throughout the preseason. He’s also familiar with Martino and his staff’s approach to training and talent development. Henderson and Martino worked together at Inter Miami, and after Lionel Messi’s arrival, he successfully deconstructed and then rebuilt (with Martino’s input) a squad that had finished near the bottom of the Eastern Conference in 2023. Inter Miami won the Supporters’ Shield in 2024.
Henderson and Martino have been in lock-step regarding the player profiles that the club will pursue moving forward. Nonetheless, this first winter transfer window under Martino has been a challenge. “You don’t get every player you want, and sometimes that’s frustrating,” Henderson said. “But you move on to the next guy. We’ve lived through a couple of those scenarios.”
When asked before the season to evaluate the squad’s posture at that moment, Henderson, like Martino, was encouraged but prudent with his response. He said that up to seven players from the 2025 roster had improved under Martino, but hinted that 2026 was going to be a gradual process towards rebuilding a winning culture.
“I would say it’s in a growth period where we’re trying to make improvements into the team,” Henderson said. “I can see the level has increased just playing under (Martino) — confidence, understanding of the roles, clarity, identity. The mood of the team is good. It’s optimistic. Guys feel more purpose in what we’re doing.”
Henderson said he sees similarities between Martino and the late Sigi Schmid, who won MLS Cup titles with the LA Galaxy and Columbus Crew.
“Neither of them were really surprised by anything,” said Henderson. “Tata processes something, thinks about it, and comes with a steady decision. That winning drive is contagious throughout the club.”
But real-time game situations have tested Henderson’s initial outlook. The jump from the preseason, which only included two warm-up matches (Atlanta’s third preseason friendly was cancelled due to weather) to an accelerated 14-game sprint ahead of the 2026 World Cup, has humbled Atlanta once again.
“But I think we’re very clear and aligned on where we think we need to improve the team,” Henderson said. “There were moments last year where we didn’t feel like we were competing for 90 minutes every game. Tata just wants players who are going to compete — and every time you step on that field, it’s to win. That becomes the culture of the team.”
If there’s one positive aspect to Atlanta’s dismal start in 2026, it’s the strategic alignment between Henderson and Martino. Former president Garth Lagerwey was hired in 2022, midway through Pineda’s second season in Atlanta. Despite years-long working relationship in Seattle, Lagerwey and Pineda were never on the same page.
Deila and Lagerwey may have agreed on squad construction, but their approaches to team culture, which included publicly challenging Atlanta’s players, did not lead to collective buy-in. Before the game against Cincinnati, Almirón described the feeling around the team as “professional.”
“I believe in the ideas of the coaching staff,” he added. “That page (from last season) has to be turned. The positive thing is that Tata is back, there are good players in the group, and we’re working well — but we can only prove it with results on the field.”
Those ideas, however, are being challenged by an impatient Atlanta United constituency. Before the loss to RSL, Martino told reporters that his game model takes time to implement. It’s dependent on training time, the right players and reducing mistakes. If mistakes are made, players must have a short memory and unshakeable confidence.
This is not new for Martino. This approach has always been part of his coaching philosophy. And it worked before in Atlanta. “I’m not going to choose another way of playing,” Martino said last week. “We are going to play this way.”
On Saturday night after the defeat to RSL, Martino pledged to protect his players following questions from reporters about the starting goalkeeper and center back positions. He said that swapping players in and out after a string of losses is “like sacrificing the players who get changed.”
“Eventually,” Martino said, “there’s going to come a point where we’ll run out of players to put in, because we have to change them constantly.”
Martino also addressed the health of the club and reiterated that there is a well-thought out plan in place that the coaching staff and front office agree upon. “We have no doubt about where we’re going,” he said. “We may have differences when it comes to timing, but where we’re headed, there are no doubts there.”
There was analysis and a detailed forecast for future squad improvements that started in late November and finalized mid December, he continued. When things do not start off as planned, Martino said, permanently changing the direction of the team is ill advised.
“When these moments happen, what you cannot doubt is the project,” Martino said. “Precisely so that what I mentioned before doesn’t happen to us: that the season slips away in June and the year is already lost.”
When one of his answers was lost in translation, Martino responded sharply at the podium. “I didn’t talk about the long term,” he said in response to a reporter’s question about a purported long-term plan. The vision for Atlanta United’s return to glory, according to Martino, will carry on with or without him. As a tangible example, he referenced Inter Miami winning MLS Cup in 2025 after he instilled a winning identity before departing. It took two transfer windows to reach that pinnacle.
Martino quipped on Saturday that he had not counted how many transfer windows it would take to similarly position Atlanta. But after a third consecutive loss, Martino seemed to suggest that the foundation he and Henderson are laying could outlast his second tenure in Atlanta.
“You all know there is no long term if there are no results,” Martino said.
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