Marcelo Bielsa was very close to directing in Major League Soccer, This is how he revealed it this Tuesday The Athletic in a report that revealed that ‘El Loco’ was the main option to fill the position of the first technical director in the history of Atlanta United, before they made their debut as an expansion team, in the 2017 season of American football.
According to journalist Felipe Cardenas, Bielsa was contacted by Atlanta United in 2015, when the Argentine was still managing Olympique de Marseille., to join the team that had recently been named as an expansion club in MLS, and even became known, that The former Argentina coach held a meeting with Carlos Bocanegra and Darren Eales, members of the board of the “Five Stripes”, who would try to convince the iconic South American coach to join a project that seemed promising.
According to sources The Athletic, the managers of Atlanta United and the current manager of Leeds United of the Premier League, met at the InterContinental Marseille, where both parties seemed convinced to join their paths, although the decision would not fall on Bocanegra and Eales, as they would need the approval of Arthur Blank, owner of Atlanta United and who joined MLS as one of the new and powerful owners in American football.
Atlanta United had Bielsa on a silver platter to make him the first coach in his history, however a request did not go down well, especially for Carlos Bocanegra, since the coach requested that the American club leave football decisions in his hands 100%, including player signings and monitoring of them, something that complicated the negotiation.
“El Loco” waited a few weeks to be contacted again by the Georgia club, however the call never came. Various sources said for The Athletic that (Bocanegra) “he never looked for Bielsa again. He never called him. Bielsa felt that he had been wasted his time”, So the Argentine himself closed the door of directing in Atlanta.
After the possibility that Bielsa was the first technician in the history of the franchise, Atlanta United continued with the search for the strategist to head the project in its first seasons, so the name of Gerardo ‘Tata’ Martino, who had directed FC Barcelona and the Paraguay Argentina teams, appeared on the table and this was the beginning of a glorious story for ’The Five Stripes’.
This was the arrival of Martino to MLS
After leaving the Argentine bench, after falling in the finals of the Copa América in 2015 and 2016, the 'Tata' received Bocanegra and Eales in Rosario, in a meeting in which the arrival of the Argentine strategist to American football was conceived , well Although he had various offers in both European and Mexican football, Martino opted for AtlantaAfter the project was presented to him and, like Bielsa, he asked to be involved in management decisions.
For Eales, the hiring of Martino was “perfect”, despite the fact that the coach himself threatened to leave the team at the end of 2016If Atlanta did not comply with the players that ‘Tata’ had requested, however, the arrival of players such as Josef Martínez, Ezequiel Barco or Miguel Almirón, convinced Martino to head the project, in which just their second season, they managed to lift the first MLS Cup in their history.
The relationship wore out
Sources told The Athletic that the relationship between Gerardo Martino and Carlos Bocanegra wore off, something that led to his departure from Atlanta United in 2018. A former club footballer commented that “they had a terrible relationship”, so the Argentine decided not to renew his contract and later take over as coach of the Mexican team.
After your departure, names like Manuel Pellegrini, Claudio Ranieri and Gabriel Milito, appeared on the Atlanta United agenda, which eventually featured Frank De Boer as Martino's replacement. The arrival of the Dutch coach was accompanied by the U.S. title. Open Cup, although it ended up being a step backwards for the franchise, which dismissed De Boer in 2020 and that Currently they have started a new project looking towards their origins and presented Gabriel Heinze as a new strategist for the 2021 season.