How Atlanta United’s Academy is forging tomorrow’s stars

At the end of a long hallway in Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Training Ground, past the locker room, state-of-the-art gymnasium, and laundry area, you’ll find an office with some writing on the wall showing formations and player names. It belongs to Javier Perez, the club’s Director of Methodology, who has headed the Academy since his arrival on April 22, 2024.

Perez joined after stints at Toronto FC, New York City FC, and the U.S. Men’s National Team as part of their coaching staffs. In his native Spain, he coached some of Real Madrid’s youth teams in the early 2000s and worked as the Associate Director for Educational Programs for the Royal Spanish Football Federation. He has over 20 years of experience in player development and wrote the U.S. Soccer Coaching Curriculum.

When he first arrived at the club, he had three main objectives: to develop players for the first team, to align the pathway from the U-13 level through to the 2nd team to create smooth transitions for young players, and to align the style of play. This season, there is evidence of the academy making serious strides toward those goals. For starters, young players like Domink Chong Qui and Cooper Sanchez have developed leaps and bounds over the past year, earning homegrown contracts several months ahead of schedule after positive showings with the 2s and the first team.

But what about the players currently making their way through the academy ranks? This season, Atlanta United’s U15 and U16 teams made it to the 2025 MLS NEXT Cup finals, where they fell to Philadelphia Union and Real Salt Lake, respectively. Furthermore, Atlanta’s James Donaldson won the U16 MLS NEXT Cup Best Goalkeeper award. The Five Stripes’ U18 team also competed well this season, making a brilliant run to the Generation Adidas Cup semifinals, where it defeated teams like Santos Laguna and Inter Milan. Finally, the U13 and U14 teams were ranked first and third in the country using MLS NEXT’s groundbreaking Quality of Play rankings.

“We have two objectives at the academy: Number one, we want to produce players for the first team, but at the same time, we want to build the club’s reputation through success,” Perez said in an exclusive interview with Scarves and Spikes. “We define success with five different elements: One, through innovation, two, through teamwork, three, through winning — that’s important, to win as well. Four, through leadership — we want everyone in our space, in the academy and the second team is a leader in their space, in their department. And five, through development. We want to develop players, but at the same time, we want to develop the staff that we have here.”

One of the things that Perez asked the club for when he joined was an investment in its Academy staff. He said that when he first came in, he observed that one coach would have to work with 18 players, which he saw as a severely unbalanced ratio. Now, he oversees a 40-person staff that works with 111 Academy players plus 13 Academy graduates playing with the second team (roughly three players per staff member).

“I think we have a good team that now is multidisciplinary and offers support in many areas, like performance, psychology, education — all of these, not only the coaching side,” Perez said. “We know it’s important to offer other supporting elements from the mental point of view, from the physical point of view.”

An important part of this multidisciplinary approach that Perez and his team are building includes the addition of Individual Development Plan (IDP) coach Denis Silva Puig, who joined the club this summer. Puig was the Technical Director of the FC Barcelona academy and a youth team coach for some of their upper age groups. According to Perez, Puig is helping build the IDP program at Atlanta United to create plans that cater to each player’s individual needs.

“You cannot build the same plan for every winger. Maybe a winger that likes to come inside and shoot on goal and another winger that likes to take players 1v1, win the endline and make a cross,” Perez said. These are different characteristics that you need to take into consideration when you build a plan for that player, and that’s what Denis can bring with his experience and expertise.”

Puig will also help create a smoother transition for players going from the second team to the first team, something that Perez said the club had been missing previously.

Perez said that he also requested education and nutrition for the players. He believes the club’s involvement in educating its Academy members gives them a crucial opportunity to cultivate a character that aligns with the club’s values. Additionally, he cited proper nutrition as a key factor in boosting performance in training and matches.

He’ll also get a lot more real estate as work on the expansion of the club’s training ground nears its completion. The $23 million project represents a significant investment in the Academy, adding classrooms, office space, and a 4,000-square-foot gym specifically for Atlanta United 2 and the Academy.

“That reflects the ambition of the club… when they approached me to come here and lead the development project,” said Perez. “Now it starts to materialize on what we were thinking that it could be.”

Another aspect that Perez focuses on is helping to shape the club’s academy scouting based on desired player profiles. He said that he looks for three things in prospective talent: First and most important is the athlete’s character. The club aims to bring in prospects that exhibit a winning mentality — as Perez calls them, “fighters.” Next is skill. Willingness alone does not make a good footballer; they also need to possess technical ability, understand the tactical elements of the game, and develop their physical attributes. The third and final item is one that Perez says is often overlooked, but very important: What does the player’s support system look like? Typically, it’s their family, but it can also be a friend or mentor who helps the player maintain peace of mind through what is a very rigorous process.

“Sometimes it happens right now when we are recruiting an extremely talented player, and the player doesn’t have the support. Maybe this is not the right environment for that player, even if he checks the other two boxes,” Perez said.

Perez also oversees Atlanta United 2, the last rung of the Academy ladder before players reach the first team, which is experiencing a period of significant change. For starters, head coach Steve Cooke departed the club late last month to take a position at Lexington SC, leaving assistant coach Jose Silva in charge while the club finds a replacement. Moreover, Chief Soccer Officer Chris Henderson hinted in a recent press conference that the second team will get younger over the next few years.

“You can expect, I wouldn’t say something different, but you can expect a second team that the main objective is to provide experience for those younger players,” Perez said. “So are we going to get always the results with the second team? Maybe not. We still want a team looking for playoffs, but first and foremost, we want to have a second team that is a landscape or a platform for the players coming into the academy and not being afraid to make the mistakes, and we can take chances so they can get the experience.”

While fans may be questioning the club’s appreciation of its homegrown talent after Efrain Morales’ trade to CF Montréal and Noah Cobb’s loan to Colorado Rapids earlier this summer, Perez assured that the organization has a clear vision that may not be immediately obvious from an outside perspective.

“Sometimes you can make assumptions when you don’t know what is inside the organization, and I think some of these players that can break into the first team, that is good that they stay at the club, but some others, they can’t break into the first team, right?” Perez said. “So we need to find options so they can keep developing, whether he’s here at the club or elsewhere.”

“This is the case of Efra [Morales] or Noah, which is still on loan, but we have other players that can break through the first team, and our objective is to keep developing. That’s why the second team is so important. We are now bringing a lot of U18, U16, even a U15 training player into the second team, so we can expedite that development, so we don’t want to be afraid of taking chances for the players that they have talent.”

The next generation of young Five Stripe talent will hit the field soon as the 2025-26 MLS NEXT season kicks off on Sept. 6, with Atlanta United’s Academy competing in the brand new Homegrown Division along with its fellow MLS academies and 122 MLS NEXT Elite Academies.

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