Memories don’t win trophies.
Seven years ago to the day, Gerardo "Tata" Martino and Atlanta United were busy preparing for a 2018 Eastern Conference Final matchup with the New York Red Bulls that would catapult them to the club’s first and only MLS Cup win.
On Thursday, Martino reintroduced himself to Atlanta and a fanbase that’s had little to celebrate since his final match in charge.
Recent struggles
To put this moment in perspective, Atlanta United earned 1.28 points per game from 2019 through 2025. That sandwiches them right between the Colorado Rapids and CF Montréal in the league table over that span. Neither of those teams have operated in the same tax bracket as Atlanta.
No one really has.
Starting with Gonzalo "Pity" Martínez’s arrival in 2019 through Emmanuel Latte Lath's then-MLS record incoming transfer ahead of this season, the Five Stripes have reportedly spent over $100 million on transfer fees for Designated Players alone.
The results haven’t matched the ambition.
That’s especially true for 2025. Atlanta United did compete for a trophy from a certain point of view. It just happened to the Wooden Spoon, an "award" given to the league's last-place team that the Five Stripes nearly "won" in a season that ended with head coach Ronny Deila being let go after one year.
Back to the best
So, now, Tata. Again.
It worked out well the first time. So well, in fact, that Eastern Conference rivals Inter Miami CF hired the legendary Argentine manager two years ago to steer their Lionel Messi-led project that resulted in a Leagues Cup 2023 title and record-breaking 2024 Supporters' Shield haul before Martino stepped down at the end of last season.
Tata returns to Atlanta as the winningest and most beloved coach in team history by a significant margin.
But building an expansion team from the ground up is far different from rescuing a club from the hole they’ve dug in that same ground.
“I think I'm not in a position to speak about what's happened here since I've left,” Martino said through a translator. “But what I can say is we were very happy with the kind of identity that we had then.
"And so what we're going to try and do is build the identity that we want to have with the team while taking into account that we can't always go back on just memories and how things were. Because, of course, we've all changed. And many things have changed since.”
Almirón's impact
The only thing that hasn’t changed is the focal point of Martino’s attack.
Fellow club icon Miguel Almirón returned last offseason following a six-year stint in the English Premier League with Newcastle United.
Things didn't go as planned, with the Paraguayan international producing six goals and seven assists in 2025 – well below the 12g/14a he put up during Atlanta's 2018 MLS Cup-winning campaign.
Martino seems keen on fixing that.
If anyone can, you’d have to figure it’s him. He’s the reason Almirón arrived in Atlanta in the first place. "Miggy" famously laid it all out in an article for The Players' Tribune in 2017.
I spoke to Tata for a few minutes.
And it turns out that this legend, this idol … he’s also the nicest guy in the world.
He told me he had an offer on the table for this new project in the United States, and that if he was going to go, he wanted me to go with him.
“Quiero contar contigo, Miguel.”
Now, they get a chance to count on each other again in a city that adores them. And Martino is expecting a more experienced version of Almirón to lead the way for Atlanta as he also prepares to represent Paraguay at next year's FIFA 2026 World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
“It's always nice to be reunited with players who we have a lot of love for,” Martino said. “In this case, with Miguel, we shared a wonderful time here and from afar watching his career grow.
“Our intention is to try to get the best version of Miguel. Because we know that this season, he not only has a big commitment to Atlanta, but also a big commitment to the national team in the World Cup here. So we believe that he can be the leader on the field, and our goal is also to surround him with other players, where he can be the main leader on the field.”
Almirón will have to be a leader for a very different team from the 2017 and 2018 sides. Leandro González-Pírez and Michael Parkhurst aren’t walking through the door – and neither is Josef Martínez, most likely (Martino shot down the rumors linking the legendary Venezuelan striker to an Atlanta return during Thursday's press conference) – and the team culture as a whole could get a reboot.
That means new players and a revamped set of expectations from a new coaching staff. As eager as Atlanta fans are for Martino to put them back on their perch, those changes won’t happen immediately.
“We know in MLS that changing a team can take time, given some of the roster rules,” Martino said. “We can’t expect everything to be done in one transfer window. More likely it will take at least a year.”
Big challenge ahead
If the payoff is anything like 2018, Atlanta fans will be fine with a little patience… as long as they aren’t stuck wallowing in a year like 2025 again anytime soon.
But, hey, without 2025, maybe Tata's return doesn’t happen.
“He comes with a staff that understands each other,” said chief soccer officer and sporting director Chris Henderson, a former Inter Miami executive who worked with Tata during his stint with the Herons. “They understand their roles really well, and they will fit in to help build an instant culture inside the building. So I think, you know, there's a lot of conversations going on right now, communication between different departments.
"We obviously won a lot of games together [in Miami], but there are things in seasons where you have ups and downs. And I think it's important to have some experience for those situations where you can figure out your way to get out of those. So I have great trust in Tata and his staff.”
Henderson and Martino have won together before. Almirón and Martino have won together before. Atlanta United and Martino have won together before. Affable and pleasant as ever, he’s already won his first press conference back. But that’s all in the past now.
Can he turn the Five Stripes into a contender in the future? Atlanta are counting on him to. He seems ok with that.
