New Atlanta United president Mauricio Culebro on the summer window and winning fans back

It’s been a long time coming, but Atlanta United and NWSL Atlanta have a new man in charge of all things soccer, and he walked into the organization at perhaps the toughest point in the Five Stripes’ history.

Mauricio Culebro was formally introduced Monday as President of Soccer for AMB Sports and Entertainment. It’s a brand new role created when the decision was made to start the NWSL team, and it’s one from which fans are expecting big changes. While Culebro will report to AMBSE CEO Rich McKay, the Atlanta United front office of Chris Henderson, Dimitrios Efstathiou, and Skate Noftsinger will all report to him.

The Five Stripes sit 14th in the Eastern Conference on 11 points, 28th out of 30 in the Supporters’ Shield standings. The 3-9-2 record admittedly undersells how rough it’s actually looked, though. The Benz, a building that used to be the envy of the entire league, has felt half empty, relatively speaking, for months now. McKay noted that even though the attendance is still high by MLS standards, it’s not where they know it can be. And Culebro got a front row seat to what the atmosphere is supposed to feel like, because he spent a few of his first days in town watching World Cup matches inside a packed Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

The search took quite some time, with McKay stating it ran close to four months, spanned 20 leagues, and ran through roughly 40 candidates before narrowing down to five finalists, then two. AMBSE brought in longtime partner Sportsology Group to help, which is the same company that has assisted with a variety of hires over recent years. The idea, from the jump, was to find one person who could sit on top of both clubs, and ideally someone who’d done it on both the men’s and women’s side.

AMBSE Vice President of Executive Strategy Josh Blank, who spoke before Culebro, called it a search for “a little bit of a unicorn of an individual, and with Mauricio, I think we found that.”

Culebro rose from an intern all the way to running two of the biggest clubs in the Western Hemisphere. He spent more than 15 years at Club América. He spent the last five as president of Tigres, overseeing both the men’s and women’s programs, where he racked up trophies, including a Liga MX title, a Campeón de Campeones, a Campeones Cup, plus four Liga MX Femenil titles and three Femenil Campeón de Campeones cups. Between those two stops, he became the only club president in Mexico to win men’s and women’s league titles at two different clubs. He also spent two years as chief operating officer of the Mexican federation, where he helped run the country’s planning for hosting matches at this very World Cup.

So yes, he may be new to MLS and the NWSL, but he’s not new to building soccer clubs that win silverware and draw in fans. Time will tell all, and it’s not lost on the club nor Culebro that fans are tired of waiting, but he does have a serious pedigree.

He didn’t promise a quick fix, and to be fair, no one realistically expects that. What he laid out instead was a philosophy, diving into the way he sees a transfer window, noting that every move has to make sense for now and the future at the same time. He said “every transfer we try to do in every window, we try to look at it for the long term and for the short term.” He doesn’t want to bring in a player just to bring one in, just to, as he put it, “take care of the transfer windows.” Whether that’s reassuring or frustrating probably depends on how many of these transfer windows you’ve sat through, hoping things will change for the better.

Culebro was clear that this break has been useful, though. They’ve had time to talk, time to plan, time to actually think before the window opens. The secondary window runs from July 13th all the way to September 2nd this year, the latest it’s closed in two decades, so there’s some extra runway. Importantly, he framed the weeks ahead as a stack of decisions rather than one magic signing. Hiring the NWSL club’s chief soccer officer is one of them. Atlanta United’s revival is another. He noted the plan he’s building covers the short, the mid, and the long term, and that “human capital,” the people in the building, is the first thing he’s taking time to focus on.

On how the roster actually gets built, he made a point of saying it won’t be his call alone. “I’m a strong believer in teamwork,” he said, “for me, it’s never only my decision.” He pointed to Chris Henderson, the analytics, and the coaching staff as the people he’ll lean on. He didn’t put a number on how many windows it takes to get Atlanta United back to being a legit contender, but he did give a target, saying “if we can reach the playoffs…everything can happen.”

When asked in Spanish about the coaching staff, Culebro backed Tata Martino. He explained that the manager’s body of work speaks for itself, and that Tata has his full confidence. Martino himself said in his very first press conference back in Atlanta that fixing the product on the pitch would take time, and it’s hard to believe that was only about seven months ago.

I asked Culebro an initial question that’s essentially been buzzing since he was announced back in March: relatively soon, what can he actually do to fix the product on the pitch and get people back into the Benz?

His answer was that it takes a holistic approach, not one specific change. He kept coming back to much of the talent already being here, including the coaching staff and management. Fans show up, he said, “not only [to] win, but to have fun, to see a team that represents them.” Right now, it’s arguable that the Five Stripes’ style and quality of play has been missing, despite Tata’s best efforts to fix it with what he has. Culebro acknowledged it’s “something that we need to fix as soon as we can.”

I also asked about the academy and his philosophy for the youth setup, and his take there was refreshingly hands off. The academy is winning, so he’s not about to come in and break something that is purring like a kitten. A club record four teams made MLS NEXT Cup in Salt Lake City recently, with the U-13s returning home champions after beating the LA Galaxy on penalties in the final, and the U-16s reached their bracket final before falling in a shootout. “I don’t want to change anything from there,” he said. “Now that they’re doing so well, I don’t think that would be like a priority.”

Culebro ended with some confidence, explaining that he knows the deal. “I know how this works,” he said. “I’m not new to this.” Ownership has patience, sure, but at the end of the day, as he put it, you can do everything right off the pitch and none of it matters if the team isn’t winning. He gets that the results have to come, and they have to come soon.

We’ve heard a lot of right things at a lot of these introductory pressers, and the product on the pitch after the World Cup is the only thing that’s going to tell us whether this one was truly any different. But like I noted before, the pedigree is certainly there, and it’ll be nice to have a fresh set of eyes on a problem that’s been tough for Atlanta United to solve over the past few years.