The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Perez brings ideas for academy
Coach’s model with U.S. Soccer synced school/ pro players for success.
Javier Perez didn’t get to his hotel room until 11 p.m. Wednesday. He was back at Atlanta United’s training ground in Marietta by 8:15 a.m. Thursday. It remains to be seen if there will be enough hours in the day for Javier Perez to accomplish his goals as Atlanta United’s new director of methodology, but he seems eager to test those limits.
Perez has been with the club for two weeks, hired to coach the coaches of Atlanta United 2 and its academy teams to develop players based upon certain models for each position that also take into account their performances, data points and personality characteristics. Perez’s curriculum will be adapted from the one he wrote for U.S. Soccer more than 10 years ago and has resulted in success because, he said, soccer has evolved.
Success will be measured by how many players are developed into first-team choices, how many are purchased by other clubs in Europe before or after they reach Atlanta United’s first team or go on to play in college, and lastly, of perhaps less importance, how many trophies those players help the academy teams and Atlanta United 2 win. Whatever the outcome as players, developing the young men into mature, responsible people is an across-the-board goal, Perez said.
Putting it in the simplest terms, say Atlanta United sells Caleb Wiley during the 2025 winter window. There should be another left fullback with Atlanta United 2, or perhaps in the academy, who has been trained to fit that first-team player profile, who understands the team’s style of play and what to do in certain situations. That’s what Perez has been hired to produce.
“It’s very, very interesting, this role, right, because I think the most important thing right now is to align the expectations of the academy with the first team,” he said in an exclusive interview with The Atlanta Journal-Consti
tution on Thursday. “This is one of the biggest clubs in North America, one of the best clubs in the MLS. And the objective for the first team is always to win titles.
“Every academy now is investing, every academy now is pushing and challenging the prospects. And I think aligning the academy with the first team thinking not only in terms of producing players, but being successful as well, winning games, winning championships, create that culture, create that mentality is something important. So, that’s first and foremost the objective.”
The job seems professorial. Perez, tall, thin, focused and soft-spoken, comes across as professorial. He carries a small notebook. He listens intently to questions, smiling when he is asked something that creates a positive emotion.
For example, Perez’s first soccer memory percolated in 1982 when the World Cup was hosted by his native country, Spain. Perez was 5 years old.
He and his family would watch the matches on a blackand-white TV in their living room in Valladolid. Before every match, the World Cup mascot, an orange named Naranjito, would run onto the field.
From that first memory grew a desire to coach and teach. Perez threw himself into studying the game, earning a doctoral degree in Sports Science from University of Leon in Spain and coaching within the youth ranks of Real Madrid.
Oh, and he has a laundry list of FIFA coaching licenses and speaks several languages. Again, professorial.
He joined U.S. Soccer in 2012 and coached the Under18 team and was an assistant with the U20 team. He moved to NYCFC under Patrick Vieira in 2015. He joined Toronto in 2021 as an assistant and became its interim manager that summer. He left the club when the season ended.
Perez said he decided to join Atlanta United because he wanted a project in which he could make an impact and that he could devote himself to for a longer period.
“I always work with worldclass organizations, I think Atlanta is a world-class organization,” he said. “And I always look for opportunity within that world-class organization. The opportunity here is room for improvement for the academy. I would like to see Atlanta to be the best academy in the country, or at least one of the best academies in the country. I think I can contribute to that.”
Perez and Atlanta United manager Gonzalo Pineda spent more than four hours during an evening last week talking soccer theory, not stopping until 8:30 p.m.
“I love those conversations,” Pineda said. “So every time I can have a person that is as intelligent and understands football to that degree, I want to have as many conversations as I can because we both learn or we both share opinions and things. So, it’s been amazing for me, so I hope we can be very well integrated. I hope we can work together. I hope we can do great things.
“I think the foundation of the academies are great, but I think him, he can add a couple more value things to add to the methodology in the academies and hopefully produce even more players to the first team.”
It will work like this: Perez already has started to watch academy teams and talk with the coaches of those five teams. The U17 team will be the test pod to implement Perez’s ideas during training and in games to start to prepare the players for the remainder of their season.
When those teams take a break during the summer, he will switch to Atlanta United 2.
When the academy teams start again in August, he will take what he learned from working with the U17s and implement — one of his preferred words — those ideas to all of the academy teams during the fall. There will be benchmarks for 30 days, 60 days and 90 days.
Perez will work closely with the coaches on drills and training ideas to help better develop the players. He will watch film from sessions and from games with the coaches.
Perez said he likes what he has seen the first two weeks. He appreciates the intensity of the practices and how they are organized. He can help the coaches structure sessions so they can better observe, and eventually he will help them develop sessions that are heavily focused on tactics and how to communicate that to the players.
“We feel we have a good curriculum in place; we hope he will elevate that and take it to the next level,” Vice President Carlos Bocanegra said. “Not only to enhance that, to implement it even further into all our academy teams. We feel (he) can make a big impact across the club.”