Training Ground Notebook: Atlanta United's Rebuild Isn't Just About the Roster
- Jason Longshore
- 12 minutes ago
- 9 min read
Pedro Amador is gone, Paulo DÃaz is still waiting on a visa, and Júnior Alonso is already settling in. None of that explains why this team hasn't come apart. For that, ask the locker room, and ask what's waiting for them in Chester this weekend.
Matt Edwards has an answer ready when someone asks what golf actually does for him. "Staying concentrated on the ball, clearing your head, that's actually been huge for me in terms of competition on the field," he said, "and just being relaxed, not tensing up, because that's when you can mess up."
He's not the only one who's found that translation useful. A rotating group, Edwards, Will Reilly, Adrian Gill, Luke Brennan, and Fafa Picault among them, has made the golf course a regular stop this summer, and more than one of them described it the same way: a place to lower the temperature before it costs them on the field. "We all go out, and we try to hang out as a group, just to stay close when things are tough," Edwards said, "because that's when the people closest to you can help you get out of it."
A Roster Turning Over Mid-Crisis
Tata Martino spent a good portion of Thursday's press conference explaining a transfer that had been announced that same morning, and by the numbers, there wasn't a lot to explain. Pedro Amador started 2 of Atlanta's 17 MLS matches this season and finished it with 238 minutes played, barely more than two full matches worth of soccer across six months. He was transferred to Hapoel Be'er Sheva in Israel. Martino, asked about it from several directions, kept landing on the same explanation.
"Evidently, over these six months, we opted more for Elias [Báez] than for Pedro," he said. "When these kinds of opportunities come up with players, you have to be very careful with the ones who go many months with few opportunities. I understand those are the players who wear out fastest, because they play so little."
The math behind that gets clearer once you count what Atlanta already has at left back without Amador. Ronald Hernández, Dominik Chong Qui (who has been outstanding with Atlanta United 2 this season), Toto Majub (back from injury with the 2's and training with the first team), and Júnior Alonso, who played the position for Paraguay at this summer's World Cup, are all internal options. Martino made exactly that point when it was suggested the club would struggle to find a cheaper replacement now that Amador's low salary was gone. "We have the option of playing Ronald, of playing Dom, of playing Junior, and eventually of playing Toto," he said. "You're presupposing that we have to bring in a player to replace Pedro, and that's not something we're thinking about at all. If I were thinking about a player to replace Pedro, Pedro wouldn't have left."
He also pushed back on the idea that money was ever the real driver. Amador and Elias Báez, the U-22 signing who passed him on the depth chart, carry similar salaries, Martino said, but Báez's U-22 designation gives the club roster flexibility that Amador's spot doesn't. "We can make mistakes," he said, "but there's nothing improvised." He also stressed that Báez could be moved out of the U-22 designation if needed at little cost.
Amador's departure is one piece of a squad that has thinned out at exactly the wrong moment. Saba Lobjanidze was traded to Real Salt Lake on July 1. Sergio Santos and Steven Alzate are both out injured. Paulo DÃaz, the Chilean center back signed two weeks ago, is at the embassy in Santiago getting his visa. And Emmanuel Latte Lath, the club's record signing, is in what Martino called "an uncertain situation," with the front office openly fielding transfer interest in the striker.
That thinning is one reason Fafa Picault has been playing center forward the last two matches, not a tactical experiment for its own sake. "What we're looking for with him is the depth that this team doesn't have right now," Martino said. Picault, for his part, called it a return to an old role rather than something new. "It was my role at Sparta Prague and St. Pauli," he said. "I've always kind of been in between the two [winger and striker], so I've had those striker instincts."
The one clean bright spot in the rebuild has been immediate. Alonso has drawn nearly identical praise from two players who don't often get asked the same question the same week. "You can sense his leadership qualities instantly," Edwards said. Reilly, separately, called him a "solid presence, good communication, wins one v one duels, tough experience... a really solid backbone in that back line."
None of this is a roster that's settled. It's one that's actively being poured into a new shape while the results are still not there. Martino also used part of Thursday's session to air a longer frustration about how little margin MLS gives him to lean on the academy in the meantime. Ignacio Suarez-Couri, an academy product who has already appeared for the first team a handful of times, was left off the Philadelphia trip specifically because playing him would use up his fourth and final allowed appearance for the season. "It needs to be much easier to bring second team or academy players up to the first team," Martino said. It's a rule he clearly finds badly timed for a club that needs bodies.
The Culture Fix Wears Number 22
Fafa Picault didn't dress up how the last week has felt. Asked Thursday what's kept the group from unraveling, he started with the plain version. "At the end of the day, everybody's frustrated," he said. "It's not what we want, and it's not what we expect from the group of players we have. But the good thing is that we're all in the same spot mentally where we want to get out of this, and that's important. Everybody's willing to do what it takes to fight out of the spot that we're in."
His prescription was just as unadorned. "Winning," he said, asked how to channel that frustration into something useful. "I think if we could string together one, and two, and then three, things can turn around. We've seen it done in the league before. I've been part of teams where you've been in a drought for a while, and then boom, things start to work out, and there you go." Until that happens, he framed the job as holding the room together. "We have to hold ourselves responsible, but also maintain the positivity amongst us, and keep everybody in high spirits to push forward, because if we start dropping now, we might as well just call it a wrap. That's not what you want to do at this point of the season."
He was just as plain about his own part in that. "It's kind of been my role in this situation, to actually be Unc, and spend time with the younger guys," he said. "They're all amazing guys and great talents." Asked about the nickname directly, he didn't push back on it. "Unc is still outracing most of the guys," he said. The golf, the lunches, a church service he and Luke Brennan have planned for next week, he described all of it as the same project. "I know a lot more about a lot of the guys now, from spending time with them off the field," he said. "If I go back to my Vancouver days, that was something crucial for us in our locker room. In any successful team I've been part of, that camaraderie off the field is important."
Edwards backed up that account from the other side without needing much prompting. "He's definitely the vocal one in the locker room," he said, "telling us when it's not good enough, and what other teams he's been on have done to get out of it. Every day he preaches what he's seen in past teams, and what the formula was to get to the point they got to."
That's two versions of the same read, one from the person doing the organizing, one from someone on the receiving end, and they land in the same place. Whether it changes results is a separate question. But it's clearly not just golf.
Kids Defending Their Own Home
For Edwards and Reilly, both academy products, the losing carries a different weight than it might for a player just passing through.
When I asked how he and the other academy products on this roster take ownership of a stretch like this, Matt Edwards didn't hedge. "That's the toughest one, especially for us, the young guys," he said. "It's like, this is our home, and right now, we're not defending our home. So I think we've taken ownership as, obviously, the guys that come through the academy, and we're trying to keep pushing this forward, and we're getting there, hopefully."
I felt it was worth following up, since I did not intend to suggest the losing is on the academy players specifically, only that it probably lands differently on them than it does on someone new to the club. Edwards agreed with the distinction. "It hits a little harder for us, maybe," he said, "but staying positive and showing up every day with a good mindset, that we can turn this around."
Reilly's framing was less pointed but ran the same direction. He described the homegrown group as still "bonding together" through the stretch, an ongoing project rather than a finished one. "I think we've made some strides," he said, "but we've still got a long way to go." Asked what keeps him from spiraling after a tough result, his answer was almost plain to the point of being a mantra. "You come out the following week and train hard. I think that's the best way to do it."
There's a version of this stretch where the young, homegrown core is the group most likely to check out, having grown up idolizing a club that's now in a different place. Instead, both players described the opposite instinct, an ownership that gets more personal precisely because they came up in the building. Whether that translates to points is a separate question. But it's a distinct thread from Picault's culture work, one worth tracking on its own terms as the season plays out.
A Different Philadelphia, Waiting in a Different Place
Atlanta beat this Philadelphia team in March, 3-1, at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Martino wants no part of anyone treating that result as relevant background for Saturday.
"They're a different team," he said, "coming in with a new mentality. We have to respect them just as we'd respect Nashville, or any other leading team in the league." Since March, Philadelphia fired head coach Bradley Carnell, promoted Ryan Richter to interim charge, and pulled off one of the odder moves of the summer window, re-acquiring left back Kai Wagner from Birmingham City barely seven months after selling him there. Martino noted the changes are visible, if modest. "There's a small difference in their pressing," he said. "There's also a small difference in the profile of their second forward." Where Philadelphia used to pair two similar big forwards, Milan Iloski now plays that role with more of a number 10's instincts. The service from the fullbacks, especially Wagner, has stayed a constant. "The first thing," Martino said, "is finding a way to make Wagner spend more time defending than attacking."
Edwards, for his part, warned against reading too much into the earlier result from the other side. "It's a different team, both what we have and what they have, and they're starting to get results," he said. "We need to match our intensity."
One thing to watch that isn't resolved yet. Cooper Sanchez, the 18-year-old who's started 12 of Atlanta's 13 MLS matches this season, is away at the Concacaf U-20 Championship with the US U-19s through August 9, which is why Martino was fielding questions Thursday about whether Tomas Jacob might slide into central midfield to cover. Suarez-Couri, the academy midfielder who'd be the more natural replacement, is the same player being held back from this trip because of the roster rule Martino spent part of his press conference criticizing. Whoever lines up next to Tristan Muyumba and Will Reilly on Saturday will be worth clocking early.
Two flawed teams, a road trip to a stadium that's seen its own share of turnover this year, and a first meeting long enough ago that neither side is treating it as a guide. Pregame coverage starts at 6:30 p.m. on 92.9 The Game with Madison Crews and Abe Gordon followed by kickoff with Mike Conti and me at 7:40. You can also listen on the Audacy app.