RAISE A GLASS
Atlanta education has primed former Pittodrie star for return home as link looks set to pay dividends
STRATEGIC partnerships tend to be football’s version of the impulse purchase. They appear to be a good idea at the time but are quickly forgotten about. It’s generally only when clubs send cheesy messages of support or congratulations to each other that supporters remember they existed in the first place.
Unlike the myriad pointless link-ups the Scottish game has known and long forgotten, there’s a distinct permanence to Aberdeen’s relationship with Atlanta United.
When the Dons made the announcement in December 2019, it was clear that the arrangement was more substantial than most that had gone before.
For a start, it involved money. Lots of it. AMB Sports & Entertainment, the MLS side’s parent company, invested £2million into the Dons as part of a wider £5m injection spearheaded by Dave Cormack.
Payback came by way of a seat on the Pittodrie board for Atlanta president Darren Eales, a former director of Tottenham.
Made public at the same time of news of Cormack succeeding Stewart Milne as chairman, the plans went beyond a loosely defined arrangement.
‘This collaboration between our clubs will deliver economies of scale by aligning both clubs on key football and business operation best practice,’ Cormack (below) explained.
‘It will include shared agreement on worldwide player identification, assessment, recruitment and development. For example, we will be able to tap into their impressive scouting network across South America and, in return, we can assist them with identifying and assessing players in Europe.’
Since then, Ronald Hernandez, the Venezuelan defender, has joined Aberdeen from Stabaek for £850,000 before moving to Atlanta on loan. The cynic might suggest this was always the plan. Jon Gallagher, the versatile Irishman, was loaned to Aberdeen before the partnership was even formalised.
Given its synergy only appears to be growing, the appointment of Stephen Glass as Derek McInnes’ replacement would surprise nobody. If you can swap players, you can swap coaches, surely?
There is much more to the 44-year-old Dundonian’s case than merely the fact he is the current head coach of Atlanta United 2, effectively the reserve team.
Glass amassed vast experience of British football during his playing days with Aberdeen, Dunfermline, Hibs, Newcastle and Watford. He may have been on the other side of the pond for the past three years but he is au fait with the culture of Scottish football and the demands of the Dons job.
What makes him an intriguing candidate to move into the Pittodrie hotseat is his unusual career path over the past decade.
First bitten by the Stateside bug as he finished his playing days with Carolina RailHawks, he became assistant to Stephen Kenny at Shamrock Rovers and stepped up to the main job when his old Dunfermline boss was fired. He returned to the USA as an academy coach with Atlanta United in 2018 and was promoted to head coach of the second team a year later.
His big moment came last summer. When Frank de Boer’s tenure fell off a cliff, the Scot was asked to hold the fort. Predictably, it proved to be no easy task. By the end of the year, Atlanta were 12th in the Eastern Conference and 23rd overall having
won just six games from 23. Gabriel Heinze was hired, with Glass reverting to his old job.
If that might raise eyebrows and indeed some concerns among the Red Army, the feeling is that Glass had been sat at the wheel of a runaway train. He remains a highly regarded coach in his own right.
‘Mine has been a bit of a different journey from that taken by other people,’ he recently said. ‘But I have picked up a lot of managerial stuff along the way in terms of looking after big numbers of teams and big numbers of people, with all the different personalities.
‘I have also been able to understand American culture as well, which is important.
‘I know the expectations here. I’m not big on describing management philosophies or stuff like that — I think you start sounding like you are trying to be cleverer than you are.
‘As a coach, I try to squeeze as much out the players as they’ve got. I’ve got a great group of players here and I obviously fit into the club’s philosophy or I wouldn’t be here in the first place.’
What’s beyond all dispute is the size of the job Glass was throw into. By any stretch of the imagination, Atlanta are a monster.
Their Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which they share with American football team Atlanta Falcons, now has a capacity of 71,000.
Before a recent revamp, their record attendance was 73,019 for the MLS Cup title match with Portland Timbers in 2018.
The scale of transfers they deal in is something Aberdeen could only dream about. They signed Paraguayan Miguel Almiron for £7m in 2016 and sold him to Newcastle for £21m two years later. It was the highest fee paid for an MLS player.
‘It is a huge club and hugely supported,’ added Glass. ‘It’s a one-club city as well. Back home, you have places that have a couple of teams but this is very much a one-club city.
‘The people of Atlanta support their side very, very well.
‘A difference from back home is it is a new team, just a few years old.
‘People are still getting to grips with what it means to have a football club.
‘The way it is built, though, people follow it and they like what they see when they do come to games.
‘It has been successful so far as well and I think it is important that is what gets put on the pitch when we do get people back in the stadium. ‘They want to see attacking football.’ It’s now one year since Cormack’s season-ticket push promised ‘attacking and exciting’ football — the inference being that it had been lacking under McInnes.
The longest of goodbyes now at an end, it appears that Glass has every chance of being tasked with ushering in an era of both substance and style.
Celtic skipper Scott Brown has apparently been sounded out for a player/coaching role, with Allan Russell, the England striker’s coach, also in the frame.
However it pans out, Georgia will never be far from the minds of the Aberdeen support.