Six Months from Boedo
- Jason Longshore
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
On June 22, Elías Báez came to the Atlanta United training ground earlier than he needed to. Argentina was opening its 2026 World Cup against Austria in a few hours, and he wanted to watch it with people who would know what it meant. Lucas Hoyos was there. A few teammates joined. They sat together and watched.
Six months ago, none of those people had been in his life. Six months ago, he was a 21-year-old left back at San Lorenzo with a place in the first team of his boyhood club. Then Atlanta United called.
The Conversation Before the Move
When the call came, Báez had a way to find out what the place was actually like.
He picked up the phone and talked to Eric Remedi.
The two had been teammates at San Lorenzo in 2024, the season Báez broke through to the first team. Remedi spent his Atlanta years on the 2018 group that won an MLS Cup under Tata Martino. So did Tito Villalba, who arrived in Atlanta from San Lorenzo. So did Miguel Almirón, the Paraguayan playmaker who came to the club after his time at Lanús in the Argentine league and is now back at the club alongside Báez. By the time Báez was getting calls from Atlanta, Remedi was back in Buenos Aires and could speak to both ends of the trip.
"Me dijo que iba a un club muy grande, que era muy lindo, y que me iban a ayudar en todo."
He told me it was a very big club, that it was beautiful, and that they would help me with everything.
This is what Around the Corner from Everywhere actually looks like. Báez ended up in Atlanta because a former Atlanta player who happened to be on his team in Buenos Aires told him what Atlanta was. The pipeline is not abstract. It runs through specific dressing rooms, specific conversations, specific people who once wore both shirts.
Boedo Made Him
"San Lorenzo, para mí, fue mi vida."
San Lorenzo, for me, was my life.
He arrived at the academy at six or seven. He was still there when he made his first-team debut against Defensa y Justicia in April 2024. He was still there a year later, having started every match of the Apertura, three more in the playoffs as San Lorenzo reached the semifinals, and every match of the Clausura that followed. He scored his first professional goal that season against Atlético Platense. He was the only San Lorenzo player to log every minute of the Clausura.
None of those facts is the one that says the most about him.
The one that says the most is that even after he had broken into the first team, he was still taking the train and the bus to training.
That detail does work that résumés do not. It tells you what kind of player he is. It tells you what kind of family backed him. It tells you what kind of club San Lorenzo is and what kind of relationship he had with it. The club's investment in him was intentional. He was a player they could have lost on a free transfer and chose not to. The Báez half of the bargain was simpler. He got on the train. He got to training. He took it for what it was. Not as a stop on the way to somewhere else.
As his life.
What He Sees in the League
The Báez Atlanta United signed in February is not the Báez Atlanta is about to watch in July.
The reason is partly schedule and partly process. He landed in Atlanta the week before Atlanta United opened its season against FC Cincinnati on February 21. He played in that match, with effectively no preseason behind him.
"Cuando llegué, me costó un poco, porque llegué la semana antes de Cincinnati, entonces no hice pretemporada."
When I got here, it was hard at first, because I arrived the week before Cincinnati, so I had no preseason.
He spent the next four months doing two jobs at once: playing competitive matches every week and learning a league whose tempo did not match the one he had spent his entire career inside. Then the international break came. Atlanta United paused. He paused. He says now, looking back, that he needed it.
The clearer read on what he had been adjusting to came out in the same conversation.
"En la liga argentina, transiciones muy difícil de hacer."
In the Argentine league, transitions are very difficult.
Argentine teams, he said, defend close together. They are physical. They fight. The word he used was aguerridos, which carries a meaning that does not translate cleanly. Tough, hardened, stubborn in a fight. Breaking through is hard. The trade-off, he said, is that the space is hard to find too.
MLS is the opposite. More space, faster transitions, the constant back and forth he called ida y vuelta. But the punishment is also faster.
"Sabés que es un error te puede te pueden hacer el gol."
You know that a mistake can get a goal scored on you.
That is a serious read on the league from a player six months in. It is also a description of the adjustment Báez was making in public, every week, before he had a preseason to do it privately.
Now he has one.
Marcelo
Atlanta United films a series called Matecito Martes, in which Joe Freihofer shares mate with players and lets the conversation go where it goes. In one of the recent episodes that featured Báez and Tomás Jacob, Báez was asked which player he had most tried to imitate.
Marcelo.
"Marcelo, para mí, es el mejor lateral que vi."
Marcelo, for me, is the best fullback I have seen.
What he would take from Marcelo if he could was not the highlight reel.
"La técnica que tiene para seguir en los espacios reducidos y la mentalidad que tiene."
The technique he has to keep going in tight spaces. The mentality.
Two things. A left back who has just left one of the most physically demanding leagues in the world and entered one of the most spatially demanding might want to take exactly those two things with him.
He said he would not steal everything. Just those two.
The Group He Joined
The teammates Báez talks about most are Tomás Jacob and Lucas Hoyos, the Argentines who also came to Atlanta this season. They are the early support system, the people he calls when he needs help reading the new place. He says the chemistry across the dressing room works. He is learning English a little at a time. When he needs to communicate, he and the person find a way.
The detail he keeps coming back to is the academy.
He was not expecting it.
"Me sorprendió mucho lo de la academia. Cooper, Luke. Son chicos que tienen un potencial que van a ir para arriba."
The academy surprised me a lot. Cooper, Luke. They are kids with potential who are going to keep moving up.
He named Cooper Sanchez and Luke Brennan. He talked about them the way someone four or five years older talks about younger players he wants to see do well. He said he tries to help them when they need it. He said they help him too.
That is generous from a 21-year-old. It is also paying attention.
There is a longer thread running underneath this one. Thiago Almada came to Atlanta United, made his name here, moved on to Europe, and is now part of the Argentina squad at this World Cup. Báez spoke about the example he has set.
"Nos inspira a los argentinos que venimos acá. De tratar de copiar eso. De querer romperla acá y tratar de después de ir para Europa."
It inspires the Argentines who come here. To try to copy that. To tear it up here and then go to Europe.
That sentence is honest in a way it did not have to be. It is also the arc of the Atlanta United Argentine pipeline told from inside. Villalba and Almirón and Remedi at one end. Almada in the middle. Báez, watching it from the same building, at the other.
Maradona, Messi, the World Cup
A Maradona moment came up in the conversation, as it often does when speaking about soccer and Argentina. Báez is young. He never saw Maradona play. He has people in his life who knew Maradona and told him directly that Maradona was the best of them all. He believes them.
He did see Messi.
"Yo por suerte pude ver a Messi."
I had the luck to see Messi.
He said it the way someone says something they have not stopped being grateful for.
He talked about what it would be like to face Messi here, in MLS. He used the verb sufrir. Knowing they would suffer. He still wants the match. Atlanta plays Miami twice the rest of this season, on September 5 in Miami and on October 17 in Atlanta. Báez has those matches marked on his calendar.
There is a generation of Argentine soccer that gets handed down by people who saw it, to people who did not. Báez is on the younger side of one of those handoffs. He carries the Maradona story in him through other people. He carries the Messi story in him as his own.
The World Cup is happening around him. Atlanta is in the middle of it. He is in the middle of Atlanta.
On the afternoon of June 22, Argentina beat Austria. Báez had spent the match at the club, with the Argentines who also call it home. The break was almost over. The second half of the season is coming. The preseason he never got with the group was finally underway.
The next training session was waiting.
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