Rob Valentino savors "surreal" playoff run with Atlanta United

If there ever was an unmistakable opportunity for Rob Valentino to pat himself on the back, it was the Noah Cobb substitution.

At this point it may seem like a footnote to most neutrals, as Atlanta United’s monumental Audi 2024 MLS Cup Playoffs upset – the greatest in league history, by multiple measures – of Inter Miami CF recedes into memory.

But the Five Stripes faithful watching on pins and needles as their side desperately defended their 3-2 lead in the final moments of Game 3 on Nov. 9 won’t soon forget the sight of their 19-year-old homegrown center back entering the match in the 91st minute, then clearing a Robert Taylor header off the line mere seconds later, denying the Herons’ best chance at a late equalizer at Chase Stadium.

It was one of only three touches for Cobb in what the statistics technically record as just one minute of play, but what a massive touch it was. Surely Valentino deserves some plaudits for nailing such a game-saving sub just in time, right?

Yet when the interim boss was asked about it later, he said it wasn’t even his idea.

“I didn't plan to make that sub with Noah,” Valentino explained in his postgame press conference. “I heard somebody [on the bench] say Noah could be helpful. And as I heard it, I was like, ‘Alright, let's go with it. Let's lock this down.’ Because also, you can think about penalties, but I didn't want to think in that direction. So a bunch of different things go through your head in those moments.”

Cinderella story

That manner of deflecting praise and spreading credit offers a useful window into Valentino’s methods and mindset.

Over the past six weeks or so, he’s led an underachieving team, one seemingly hovering on the brink of collapse when he took over from Gonzalo Pineda in early June, on an unlikely dash into the postseason that’s blossomed into a full-on Cinderella run.

This wild ride continues with Sunday’s Eastern Conference Semifinal visit to Orlando City SC (3:30 pm ET | MLS Season Pass).

“It does feel surreal in some ways,” Valentino told MLSsoccer.com in a candid one-on-one conversation last week, as the international break finally let him catch his breath. “Because yeah, this is my first time, as a head coach, going into the playoffs. So it's all a first in some ways, in the way it's gone about.

“I've not had time to really sit there and go, like, holy s**t, that really happened? We really got in on the last day? Because I believed it. I thought it would happen. Like, when my wife and I actually did talk about it, she's like, you know that wasn't supposed to happen. I said yeah, but have you ever seen this league? These things do happen. So that's why you have to stay consistent and persistent at what you want to go after.”

First there was the desperate late flurry that pushed the Five Stripes into the final playoffs berth, as they snapped a five-game winless skid by winning their final two regular-season matches, the latter a gutsy away upset of Orlando on Decision Day that few outside the 404 area code saw coming, combined with D.C. United’s home loss to Charlotte FC.

Then Valentino navigated his side past CF Montréal and former ATL icon Josef Martínez in a gripping Wild Card game in Québec decided by a penalty-kick shootout. Engineering a shock Round One defeat of Leo Messi’s Miami and one of his own biggest coaching influences, Gerardo “Tata” Martino, upped the ante that much further, laying waste to playoff brackets around the world and further endearing himself to a squad that has responded to his no-nonsense personality and emphasis on selfless service to the cause.

Winger Saba Lobjanidze called the environment cultivated by Valentino “amazing” and “professional” in a recent interview with The Athletic. Defender Ronald Hernández lauded his focus “on the small details” and ability to connect, communicate and motivate both individually and collectively.

“I don't know if Rob knew what he was doing when he said it, but he created a little slogan for this playoff run,” homegrown midfielder Ajani Fortune told the Scarves and Spikes podcast.

“We have to try and keep running with that.”

A fiery locker-room speech in which Valentino dismissed the doubters with a salty epithet spawned the unofficial motto of the Five Stripes’ upstart playoff run: “F.E.A.,” short for “F**k ‘Em All,” a defiant catchphrase soon splashed across t-shirts eagerly snapped up by hardcore fans.

Acing the audition

For more than a month now, Valentino has pressed all the right buttons for Atlanta, a spell made all the more impressive by his interim status, with him and club president and chief executive officer Garth Lagerwey basically acknowledging that he’s auditioning for the permanent gig in real-time.

“To be honest, yeah, I would love this job. But all along, my focus has never been about getting the job,” Valentino said. “It's been about one, getting us to a better position. I was hoping we did that earlier to make it easier, but ultimately, that wasn't what drives me. What was driving me was getting the team to a better spot – to have enjoyment every single day, is really what I've been telling the guys and our staff.

“I do want that. But it's not what drives me to talk about myself or anybody else, because the focus has been on the games, and trying to progress.”

That’s sustained by a dogged dedication to the routines he’s established. Valentino says he wakes up at 4 am most workdays, arriving at the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta Training Ground by 4:30 for a gym workout, followed by an hour or two of practice planning or individual personal development before most of his players have even entered the building. After the daily grind of training, film, tactical sessions and the like, he forces himself to hit the road between 4:00 and 5:00 pm to help ferry his two young children, aged 9 and 11, to their after-school activities before returning home.

“You hear people talk about work/life balance, and the more I hear high-level coaches talk about it, people that have had experience, it just doesn't exist. In my experience, it doesn't exist,” he said. “So the work/life balance I have is that when I'm at work, I'm at work 100%. When I'm at home, as best I can, I'm fully focused on my family and what we're doing, whatever activity we're at, whether it's dance or gymnastics or soccer.

“I try not to burn the candle on both ends, because I know that doesn't help. But especially now, when you're looking at like, well, in one day your season could be over, you [want to] give everything you got now. So definitely not been holding anything back at these moments, but also trying to stay on my normal routines."

Tough decision awaits

Even if this underdog keeps barking all the way to MLS Cup, ATL’s interim staff are prepared for the possibility that it might not be enough to sway Lagerwey to keep them around in 2025. Valentino has been hammering home that message, urging them to work like this is their first and last chance, even if he himself is on his second interim stint in charge, acquitting himself well on both occasions.

“I went through all the scenarios with the staff right away,” he explained. “I said, this is going to be an unbelievable experience. I don't know what will happen at the end. I don't know what’ll happen with the team. I don't know what will happen with us as individuals, but I do know that for our journey as coaches, we won't get another – well, I've had two now, but I didn't think I’d get another time like this.

“So I told them, there's situations that could happen. We could not make the playoffs, not get the job. We could make the playoffs, not get the job. We could win MLS Cup and not get the job. That could happen. So I never focused on that end product for myself or the rest of the staff.”

Lagerwey has been characteristically blunt about Atlanta’s disappointing 2024. In September, he decided to part company with vice president and technical director Carlos Bocanegra, one of the club’s founding executives. Last week, he told an Atlanta sports radio show that he’d concluded in early summer that “we were not going to win anything” with the team they had at the time, citing “the personalities in that locker room and the mentality that we had.”

That prompted many millions of dollars worth of transfer business in the summer window, with Giorgos Giakoumakis, Thiago Almada and Caleb Wiley sold abroad and Alexey Miranchuk and Pedro Amador arriving. It was widely assumed that Lagerwey was getting a head start on a dramatic overhaul of a flawed roster, one that would coincide with a high-profile managerial hire; the likes of Patrick Vieira and Jim Curtin have repeatedly been linked to ATL’s vacancy.

Valentino’s exploits may be complicating Lagerwey’s task, however, in the best possible sense of the word.

“I have had a formal interview,” Valentino revealed. “We did have some discussion after the last series of games. So the message from him has been, ‘Look, the longer you win games, the harder you make this’ – I don't know if he meant it like that, but just the better chance I would have. I'm sure they're looking at guys that have maybe – not maybe, they probably have better résumés than me.

“I've seen the rumors, right? I understand who is out there. But that's not a concern to me. I don't compare myself to them, because I am who I am, and they are who they are. That's the criteria that they need to look at, of what they want to go after, and they'll be the ones that can judge off that. The conversations that Garth and I have had have been very good, very honest. That, for me, has been a good working relationship, and I've had that openness with him.”

Atlanta's coaching history

In keeping with their wealthy, ambitious ethos, Atlanta have repeatedly gone for splashy coaching hires, first with Martino and later Frank de Boer and Gabriel Heinze. The first worked magic, taking ATL to a 2018 MLS Cup title with audacious attacking soccer; the latter two, not so much. Valentino was a junior member of the technical staff for much of that, often helping the managerial imports come to grips with unique quirks of the North American landscape like college soccer and MLS roster rules.

It speaks volumes that of all the prominent faces he’s worked with and learned from like Martino, Heinze, de Boer, Pineda, Bob Bradley and Adrian Heath, a youth coach from his adolescent days at Sereno Soccer Club in Arizona named Harry Demos might be the most influential.

“I worked with him from when I moved to Arizona when I was like, 12, 13 until I went to college, and then we ended up staying in touch – we built such a relationship that he actually married my wife and I,” explained Valentino.

“He's been a massive influence on how he just treats people: He was very stern with them, but at the same time, you could tell there was a lot of love and care. And I think you can be as a youth coach, right? It changes a little bit, maybe, when you get to the professional level. But there is a part of that that I always try to take with me, that I think about the way he cared and kind of loved on me. I always think about that and how I can transmit that to my players.”

Demos, he added with a smile, will attend Sunday’s Conference Semifinal in Orlando. That adds further poetry to what will be a homecoming of sorts for Valentino, who spent a good chunk of his own playing career with the Lions in their pre-MLS era, then returned to begin his coaching career at the invitation of Anthony Pulis, who’s now on Pablo Mastroeni’s staff at Real Salt Lake.

Orlando homecoming

An accomplished defender in his day, Valentino was a first-round SuperDraft pick of New England in 2008. As he related to MLSsoccer.com’s J. Sam Jones during his first interim stint in 2021, he fell agonizingly short of his MLS debut with Colorado a year later, only to be left standing at midfield as time ran out on a May match vs. the New York Red Bulls with no stoppages in play to allow him to enter the game.

That’s as close as he got. Despite being a regular on Orlando’s USL teams in the leadup to their 2015 expansion arrival, he was not among those selected to stay with the club for their ascension to MLS. A few months later a hip injury helped seal his decision to focus on coaching as his next chapter.

“There's a crazy serendipitous feeling, going back there and having a deciding game that has to happen there, and then all of a sudden, fast-forward a month later, and it's like OK, now there's another deciding game there. I've had fantastic memories in Orlando,” said Valentino, while noting that only a few faces still remain at the club from his time in purple.

“It's a place I feel fondly of, for sure. It was a lot of memories I created; my daughter was born there, so the start of my own family. So it holds a special place in my heart.”

They'll be underdogs again this weekend. Yet Valentino and ATL have already lived a storybook tale this last month, far beyond what anyone outside their inner circle could have imagined. He admits it’s got more than a glimmer of Hollywood filmcraft to it. And if they can best Messi, who’s to say they can’t ride this magic all the way to a trophy?

“I don't know. Maybe it is a little bit of a movie,” he said. “And at the end of this, maybe there'll be a good ending for that movie.”