Originally published on ATLUTD.com

The pause endures.

The studio is dark except for a couple softbox fixtures illuminating the center of the room. A man sits alone on a stool chair that has a short backrest. Gonzalo Pineda looks calm, his fingers intertwined. He wears black training pants and a gray practice jersey that puts the Atlanta United insignia on the left side of his chest.

It’s Monday, Pineda’s first day at the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Training Ground. His first day includes getting headshots taken by the team photographer – some indoors in the studio, some outside on the practice fields and around the building. The muggy, afternoon weather produces sweat spots on his shoulders and back. After the photo session, he’s agreed to take some time for a 1-on-1 interview. There are two cameras on him. One for the wide shot, one tight. The production crew prepared questions to ask him, a few formatted like fill-in-the blanks. We read a statement, then Pineda completes it with his answer.

We go through the questions, rapid-fire. A rhythm evolves. Pineda responds with assurance and precision; for some, he doesn’t even break eye contact. He knows that he likes the club’s attacking mindset. He knows what he wants to bring to Atlanta is a culture that connects the players with the fans. He knows what he wants to say. He knows what he stands for. Then, we reach the question. It’s a simple one, really – but it gives him just the slightest pause.

“My family is…”

He looks to the floor. He shakes his head. It’s not an isolating pause, like an uncomfortable moment when somebody says the wrong thing. Nor is it tense like trying to answer a question with overanalyzed caution, crafting a reply that holds repercussions all too serious.

The pause seems to point to something deeper. Like staring at hundreds of pictures taken on vacation, the abundance of memories and meaningful faces, trying to pick out which ones will make it to Instagram. There’s joy in this moment of reflection, shown in the smile that spreads slowly across Pineda’s face. There’s deep thought, captured in the held breath, the seconds-long search for words that could possibly do justice to their meaning. The moment is brief, but at the same time, feels very full.

He exhales. He looks back up.

“My everything,” he says.

*

It took a while for Pineda to get here. The club named him as its new head coach on August 12, but a positive Covid-19 test kept him from joining the team for nearly two weeks. The delayed start is one Pineda repeatedly calls “not ideal.” He says during that time he quarantined at home so he wouldn’t put his family or anyone else at risk. He kept himself occupied by studying the team, taking meetings over Zoom and communicating with interim head coach Rob Valentino after matches via text message.

After he was cleared, Pineda met the team in-person for the first time on August 20, the Friday before Atlanta’s match against D.C. He flew from Seattle to the nation’s capital and got to see the team play for the first time at Audi Field. He says his first impressions of the team were that Atlanta United was a talented group. He describes the team as very intense and says their relentless mentality stood out to him most of all. He recalls how they stepped up in that match and tried to create chances after D.C. equalized in the 54th minute.

“I love that part,” he says. “I don’t want to take that away from the players, especially our attacking players. I love that they want to attack and they want to create chances.”

Pineda’s players-first approach drives his coaching philosophy. Not only does he want to compete, he wants his players to become the best versions of themselves – to play with passion and a love of the jersey. That’s why he says he seeks consistency during the second half of the season and why he describes his role as one meant to set the players up for success. It’s why he credits Rob Valentino with the work he’s done serving as interim head coach during the transition. Valentino, he’s observed, has a strong connection with the players. Pineda sees how the many different parts, the many facets of a club, have the capability to come together and drive the team’s success.

“For me, we should be a family,” Pineda says. “We should all be part of the success we’re going to get. So everybody – the staff, everybody – we are all the same. We are all here to help the players perform at their best.”

He names four key character traits that he wants his soccer family to represent: trust, confidence, willingness and being approachable to everyone.

“It’s a great organization, great people, working here silently sometimes – in the shadows sometimes, in the offices – but they are great people looking to improve the team and to connect with the society, with the fans, with the community and also to improve the team.”

It makes sense that Pineda, referred to as a player’s advocate, looks to unify Atlanta and shape a culture that’s family-focused. He has two children, Santiago and María José, with his wife, Reyna. They, along with his parents who live in Mexico, appeared on video expressing love and support for Pineda with his new opportunity. Pineda is described by many around soccer as a family man. His wholesome values are in large part what made him attractive to team president Darren Eales and vice president Carlos Bocanegra. As Eales said in Pineda’s introductory press conference, the top factor for the front office during this head coaching search was the quality of the individual and the values he holds as a leader. 

“My standard is not just winning or losing,” Pineda says. “It’s also competing at a high level in a way that is in line with our standards as human beings, as persons, as professionals. So I don’t want to just win in any way, I want to win in the Atlanta United way.”

*

Pineda grew up in Mexico City. He started playing soccer at an early age, joining the academy for Club Universidad Nacional, commonly known as U.N.A.M. Pumas or simply Pumas. He made his professional debut in 2003 and became a prominent member in the early years of his playing career, helping Pumas win the league in 2004.

Pumas developed from humble beginnings. It began as an amateur, university club and grew into one of Mexico’s most important professional soccer clubs, winning 11 domestic trophies and the CONCACAF Champions Cup (now CONCACAF Champions League) three times. The club thrived in the 2000s under Hugo Sanchez, a coach that Pineda says fueled his passionate mentality and work ethic. Pineda credits his experience playing at the club for giving him passion for the sport and passion for life.

“Many times, I’m calm when you first meet me,” Pineda said. “But after a few hours you know I have some chip on my shoulder.”

It’s a pure and, some might argue, an idealistic goal – wanting a group of professionals to play for the name on the front of the jersey and not the back. But what Pineda experienced for himself at Pumas is what he wants for his players most of all: to play with passion.

“That is the main idea of having myself represented also into the team and that they buy in to the idea that everything we do is with passion.”

*

Pineda’s arrival comes at a compelling moment in Atlanta’s season. During early August amid the coaching transition, the club had a significant stretch of success. It went five straight games unbeaten, signed an exciting international player in Luiz Araújo, had Ezequiel Barco named to the MLS Team of the Week three consecutive times, and featured two players, Miles Robinson and George Bello, on the roster for the MLS All-Star Game. Overall, players reported more freedom during the unbeaten streak, especially on the attacking end, and it showed – in six matches, the team scored 11 goals.

The club’s recent success was an exemplification of Atlanta’s goals for itself. Atlanta United is a club with high expectations. The club set those standards early on, developing players like Miguel Almirón and Josef Martinez along with winning the MLS Cup in only its second season. Atlanta wants to win trophies and play a style that’s competitive, passionate and fun to watch. During the winning streak, Atlanta looked a little more like itself – like the versions from 2017, 2018 and 2019 that the club aspires to maintain. During that run, Atlanta played with belief, passion and competitiveness. And, doing so, they won matches. They moved themselves up the table and became a team with its eyes on a playoff spot.

Pineda says that his goals for 2021 are to compete for the title. Yet, Pineda’s background as an assistant coach with the Seattle Sounders gives him a thorough knowledge of the league. And that’s certainly a strength. He knows the idiosyncrasies of Major League Soccer. He knows how competitive the league is. He knows how difficult it is to win the MLS Cup – he helped guide Seattle to three MLS Cup appearances in four seasons as an assistant coach.

So how can Pineda manage high expectations set for Atlanta United with the reality of playing in a competitive, challenging league?

“It is obviously a great responsibility to be at a club like Atlanta United that already succeeds in the league,” he says. “That, since the very beginning, is a winner club and it’s a club that sets the standard in many different ways since the very beginning. But at the same time I will say that is the same standard I have for myself. So in that sense, I don’t have a different standard than Atlanta.”

*

At 38 years old, Pineda embraces a forward-thinking perspective. He’s a thorough student of the game and keen on analytics. He understands soccer’s place as a global sport in the modern world. It’s important to him that the fans and players are connected. He believes that the fans should be represented by the players on the field. He understands, too, that players making social appearances and staying involved in the city helps forge that connection between community and club.

“Football is a social event very important to unify cultures, to unify different ways of thinking,” he says. “That is the beauty of the game.”

There’s a point during our 1-on-1 interview with him that Pineda personifies this idea effortlessly. We ask Pineda if he’d be able to deliver some of his answers in Spanish. We’ll let you know which ones, we tell him.

“Should I just do it all the time?” he offers.

Just like that, he goes on and answers several extended questions in detail, replying in English first then in Spanish. The English answers take him a little longer, while the Spanish, his first language, rolls out of his mouth and through the room with pace. We end the interview probably a little sooner than expected. We have more – so much more – that we could ask him, but we don’t want to keep him from his day. We wrap up our time with him. In its entirety, the interview takes no more than fifteen minutes. When we say we’re done, Pineda smiles, then lifts himself off the seat.

“That was easy,” he says.

*

He conducts his first training session on Tuesday, August 24. The practice exudes intensity. Training is rapid, energetic. Pineda is active and involved, pointing toward space, giving instructions, keeping the players moving. He ends practice with a set of competitive mini-scrimmages. The players split into four teams of five. One team stays in practice gear, the other three layer on different colored pennies: orange, green, yellow. Orange plays against green on one field while yellow takes on red on another. Then they switch. Orange plays yellow, green battles red. The games last maybe five minutes each and take place on condensed fields, which gives the competition intensity and urgency. Short spurts, quick passes.

At the end, once each team has played all the others, Pineda breaks practice.

“I want to end on a make,” the head coach calls out.

It’s a sudden death shootout. The two teams on the near field each select one player to take a penalty kick. Everyone else gathers around behind the kicker to watch. Brad Guzan saves the attempt for the yellow team. Then, his scrimmage teammate Matheus Rossetto spots the ball and makes the penalty kick. When the ball goes in the net, Rossetto celebrates by sliding on his knees into the corner of the field. His teammates follow, smiling and sliding with him. Then, yellow pennies pile on top of him in celebration.

*

After training, Pineda moves off the pitch to take questions from the media he’s invited to watch the final minutes of practice. He stands in front of a stemming bouquet of microphones, taking questions in front of a black backdrop with the Atlanta United logo printed across it. He comments on practice, discusses varying shapes for the midfield and hints at ideas he has for creating more options in the attack before he breaks to meet with individual news outlets.  

“Is this going to be common, thirty minutes with the media?” one reporter asks before the scrum concludes. “Or is this just a one-time thing?”

“It’s up to them,” coach says, with a glance over at Atlanta United’s media relations team.

The reporters laugh. Maybe it’s coach’s easy smile as he says it. Or maybe it’s the tempting piece of journalistic fruit that every reporter wants to take a healthy bite from: a coach willing to provide a certain level of access.

Two days later, Pineda makes the first twenty minutes of Thursday’s practice available to the media. Later that same day, he takes their questions via Zoom.

*

Following a full Tuesday with the team at training and media at interviews, Pineda finishes his day with a different kind of audience. Over 150 kids and their families participate at the club’s Academy dinner. They sit at circular tables under the closed roof at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the place where Pineda will coach future games and where some of these youth soccer players, if they follow the track of players like George Bello and Bryce Washington, may one day appear as homegrown players under Pineda’s leadership.  

The evening is hosted by Kevin Egan. The night opens with remarks from Arthur Blank. Many young players are dressed up in suits and ties. It’s a sophisticated event of sorts, kicking off a new season not just for Pineda but for the youth development program now under his tutelage.

Pineda takes the stage to speak. He reminisces and puts himself in the shoes of these 12, 13, 14-year-old players. For many of them, their careers are just beginning. He envies them, he says, because the memories of himself at that age are so precious. The experiences of being on a team, the experiences he learned from – for him, they became fantastic memories.

“Enjoy every little day that you are going to spend in this academy,” Pineda says. “Because it’s very important for your development. Not just as players, but as human beings.”

*

Match day in Atlanta. It’s late-August, the time of year when the humidity in Atlanta is thick and meaty. The roof at Mercedes-Benz opens prior to kickoff. The rotating mechanisms pop into place, spreading a strip of sunlight over the supporters’ section at the east end of the stadium. 

Pineda arrives on the bus with the team. In a black Atlanta United polo, he stops and scribbles his autograph for fans at the arrivals’ march then again at the golden spike. Darren Eales greets him inside the stadium at the door. The two men hug.

Before kickoff, Pineda is introduced. He has changed clothes, going with more of a business look for the sideline: a sharp, white collar dress shirt and slacks. Atlanta fans welcome him with applause. The supporters’ section unfurls the Tifo designed specifically for the occasion. On the prodigious banner is the shape of Pineda filled in with glossy gold, a triumphant first raised in the air toward five red stripes. Printed above the silhouette are Pineda’s own words:

When you’re offered Atlanta United, you go for it.

Pineda’s debut kicks off. The opponent is Nashville, a league-driven rival that Atlanta tied 2-2 earlier in May. It’s a frustrating game for Atlanta, one where the attackers have chances but just can’t seem to find the back of the net. The desire, the drive is there – the most apparent example when striker Josef Martinez rips his jersey in an act of fervent heartbreak after his header goes just wide of the post.

Nashville wins 2-0 and snaps Atlanta’s four-game winning streak. The results aren’t what Pineda hoped for, nor the fans. The 5-Stripes all want to see the winning streak continue, the supporters in the stands want to witness Atlanta capture its fifth straight on the head coach’s debut. Pineda seems aware of this. He circles the field, clapping his hands toward the fans who remain in the stands – returning the applause they welcomed him with.

“I cannot say we’re satisfied,” Pineda says at his postgame press conference. “Obviously, we lost the game and that’s painful. That’s painful to me, that’s painful for the players too, and for the fans, which is the most important part.”

There are bright spots, even following a disappointing result. The loss occurs against a very good club. Nashville sits toward the top of the Eastern Conference table. They’re a strong team that is defensively sound. And the match comes at the tail end of a busy segment in the schedule, four games in 13 days, with an international break coming up.

“The players,” Pineda says after the match. “I can’t ask any more in terms of the effort, the heart, and the passion that they put on the field.”

*

Not only does Gonzalo Pineda arrive at a focal point in Atlanta United’s season, he enters at a unique moment in in the club’s history. The club is currently in its fifth season. Pineda is the club’s fourth head coach. 

The front office is committed to Pineda long-term. When introducing Pineda, team president Darren Eales expressed excitement about Pineda’s individual attributes and said he was delighted to sign Pineda to a long-term commitment. Pineda’s contract is for three-and-a-half-years, taking him through the 2024 season. 

In his first week, Pineda has already integrated himself into the Atlanta community. His speech at the Academy dinner presented a vision for Atlanta’s youth soccer community and the club’s development program. After managing his first match as head coach, he returned to Mercedes-Benz Stadium to attend the Falcons preseason game against the Cleveland Browns. He met Falcons head coach Arthur Smith, another first-year head coach new to Atlanta. 

“The 17s and the players should be always connected in a good way,” Pineda says. “The fans they should be represented by the players on the field and off the field too with all the social appearances we try to do to unify also the community in Atlanta.”  

*

When our fifteen minutes in the studio with Pineda are up, we pack up our equipment. Pineda takes himself out of the spotlight. He drops behind the lights to the back of the room where it’s dark. He shakes every person’s hand in the studio. He thanks us for our time, then goes out the door. It’s now nearly two o’clock in the afternoon. Pineda still hasn’t eaten lunch.

We set off toward our offices, the silent reporters, the staff members in the shadows. We get ready to hit the buttons that move and transform the words we recorded into content that’ll feed our digital platforms in the form of snackable videos and sound bites. We prepare to go on with our day. We assume (and hope) that coach is on his way to find some lunch.

That’s when our video team notices where Pineda went next. He didn’t go to the cafeteria and grab a plate. Or slip out the door for a Chick-fil-A run. The head coach is on the other side of the building. He’s going around the first floor, introducing himself to the community relations department, shaking their hands, bringing the staff out of the shadows, into his family, under the same lights where his team plays the most beautiful game. Because after all, to him family is everything.