Rob Valentino will certainly be a candidate for the full-time head coaching role at Atlanta United following the firing of Gonzalo Pineda.
But Atlanta’s interim boss isn’t looking past June 15’s home match against Houston Dynamo FC.
“My immediate focus is on the Houston game. I’m not thinking too far ahead,” Valentino said on Friday when asked what he’ll do to improve the fortunes of a team that is currently 13th in the Eastern Conference and mired in a six-match home winless streak. “Right now, it’s just evaluating the group where they’ve had some time off now. We had nine games and 30 days or whatever that time period ended up being. So now let them get out, get refreshed and reenergized and now come back.”
Valentino’s last stint as interim head coach came after the firing of Gabriel Heinze in 2021 after just 17 matches. He went 4-2-2 before Pineda took the reins.
Valentino said that he and Pineda exchanged text messages after the latter’s sacking on Monday.
“This is not an easy thing, the human side of it,” he said. “[On one side] there’s the sadness of that. We had a relationship and it was a pleasure to work with him. And on the other side, there’s an opportunity now for myself and the rest of the team to move forward.”
Moving forward will mean snapping a club-record five-game home losing streak in just over a week’s time against Houston, with the streak featuring some of the hallmarks of Atlanta United in past years: small sparks of attacking promise but little return — their underlying numbers in relation to their actual production differ starkly — coupled with defensive breakdowns at inopportune times.
Outside of tactics, which could see Atlanta adding “a bit more directness” to their play, Valentino’s hope is to tap into “the human side of things”, including continuing to foster relationships with his players off the pitch.
“I’m gonna really touch into that part and really try to trigger things that I feel like we can get behind together,” he said. “Ultimately [whether] it goes in on game day or goes in on training, that we’re all in one boat going together and we’re going the same direction … I feel like we’re really one spark away from letting this thing kind of ignite and really start to engage in a fire there in that sense.”
That, in turn, will hopefully lead to a culture of “shared success”, something Valentino mentioned several times.
“I want there to be shared success. It’s not on one coach or one player or one front office staff member. I think that we really want to enjoy the day to day, enjoy the shared success and I think that’s what’s gonna be the message moving forward for myself for the next couple days,” he said.
“I think that we feel like we’ve got a really strong squad and we’re gonna try to utilize all those players to the best of their abilities by setting them up to succeed.”
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Finally, a coach who realizes all we need is a little “culture of shared success”! Here we come, baby! We gonna share success all over the opposition! The excitement is back!
Saw the article that PRO has officially reprimanded the officials for giving Charlotte the own goal… obviously too little too late, but…
and both those officials officiated in matches this past weekend, so being reprimanded means nothing other than they will be lower on the priority list for postseason matches
I thought it was strange that they would overturn that call on the field. I also didn’t like how the center ref announced the decision – he should try to sound less excited.
The decision to overturn the call on the field was terrible. (If they had given the goal originally it should have also stood.) The ref’s announcement was nothing. He was trying to project decisiveness and certainty to a hostile crowd.
Aside from the comment on directness, I thought the mist interesting thing Valentino said was about transitions. In 2017-2018 the team was lethal in transition. Ever since FdB, we seem to prefer to hold the ball, letting the opposing team’s defense get into shape, and then try to break them down. It has never really worked. I would love to see him turn the guys loose in transition to explode forward and get defenders running backwards. Like the old days.
Can I say “old days?”
That mainly worked because of Miggy’s ability to run as fast with the ball as without. We currently don’t have anyone like that on the team, so fast breaks where it’s 1v2 or 2v2 are highly unlikely to work out well for AUFC. That’s the primary reason they’ve been told to hold up play as it allows our relatively slow midfield to catch up to the play. Since Nashville they have been playing more direct with long balls in behind but our weakness in getting to those and their relative inaccuracy shows why that’s not a great strategy for this team.
Like it or not, it is a team built strongly around possession and build up play. We need a much faster striker, wingers, and most importantly a 10 that is much more direct as opposed to Almada who is focused on technical skill and short range passes if the team wants a more lethal transition.
I’m not sure I’d agree with that. We’ve seen plenty of instances the past year or so where we’ve looked incredibly dangerous in transition moments.
I don’t agree with any of it. We have decent speed on the wings, good speed at wingback, and Almada is good on the dribble. Our build up play isn’t good, and high possession hasn’t led to results. We’ve been better this year without the ball.
Some good observations. There are a number of interrelated issues and there isn’t a silver bullet.
we’ve been at our best this year playing direct and on the counter. there is plenty of speed and individual creativity on this team and xande, saba, almada, tristan…can all break people down off the dribble and in 1v1’s. the problem was that pineda wouldn’t play that way unless we were chasing a goal in the last 10 minutes.
The problem is that none of them really possess superior vision or pinpoint passing skills. Miggy could out run defenders to the ball. The current guys can’t.
Yeah, Miggy was usually the fastest player on the field with the ball, and without the ball it wasn’t even close. Huge advantage to have, and it was fun watching defenders flat-out sprinting at max effort while Miggy pulled away from them easily.
Miggy was an outlier though, can’t expect to find guys like him very often. Has any team in MLS found a guy that good who would go on to be sold for $25M+ and then wind up being worth it and a very good contributor to a Champion’s League caliber club? Davies I guess, kind of, but they’re very very rare. Almada was an MLS Best XI player at 22 and is still well short of that.
I agree. But you can’t build tactics around chasing down through balls into space expressly because Miggy was an outlier.
Useless prediction:
If we replace Almada and GG well and thinkt he new DPs are doing well, the “strong squad” language will remain.
If the new DPs aren’t performing, it will shift to “well-rounded” or “balanced” squad.
I really hope we don’t get new DPs without having hired permanent manager. The only time it barely worked is with Tito I think.
Might be we replace them with non-DPs for now and the go shopping after we hire a permanent HC? If we can do that under MLS rules that is.
There is no MLS rules requirement that a DP must be replaced with a DP. However, various things complicate your idea. One is that windows close at some point for transfers, so there is only so much delay you can do. I think the date for this is very early August. After the windows close, you can only sign players who are out of contract.
Luka Jovic is out of contract at AC Milan and may be an interesting pickup. MLS starting level forward that could potentially be bought down to make DP space
Let’s grab Mbappe…..maybe when he is 39 and slow..