Frank de Boer's fortunes are changing with Atlanta United. But that doesn't mean de Boer has changed too much himself. (Getty)

It was high time for a team meeting.

Time to talk through it all. To set some things right. Because it couldn’t go on like this, four winless games into Atlanta United’s Major League Soccer title defense. So for two hours in early April, Frank de Boer, his staff and the players talked. The Dutch head coach insisted that everybody speak up, unburdened themselves.

Since that meeting, Atlanta United has strung together a record of eight wins and three losses, including a five-game winning streak, and rocketed up the Eastern Conference, trailing the first-place Philadelphia Union by just two points with a game in hand.

Since that meeting, says de Boer, they’ve yet to have a sloppy training session.

And since that meeting, the question of whether de Boer’s managerial career was collapsing has been laid to rest. Because after his 2016 appointment at Inter Milan lasted just 85 days and 14 games, and his 2017 spell with Crystal Palace was curtailed after only 77 days and five games, there were questions. And so the panic among Atlanta fans after that rotten start was understandable.

So they all talked. About expectations. About attitude at practice.

“The chemistry between us, the staff, and the players wasn’t there yet,” de Boer tells Yahoo Sports. “The attack was very good last year. But we thought we could get much better at defending. So that’s what we were heavily focused on in practice. But they didn’t enjoy all that defending.

“We asked them, ‘How do you see things? What are our core values? What’s important to us?’” de Boer continues. “It was very productive.”

It was this clearing of the air, more than anything tactical, that turned Atlanta’s results around.

“At the end of that meeting, we all made a commitment to ourselves,” midfielder Julian Gressel says. “To try to be better. To work on things we had discussed. To really turn this thing around and not waste the time we have together. Ever since then, we’ve all been a bit more on the same page and all put a little bit more energy towards it all and you can see the rewards on the field.”

It was better communication that helped Frank de Boer change his lot.

***

In lots of ways, Frank de Boer is the same.

He is 18 minutes early for an interview at the team hotel, of course. Seven games and six victories after that team meeting, and on the eve of an unlucky 1-0 loss to a 10-man New York Red Bulls, de Boer seems sanguine. He chats in Dutch over a double-espresso, never mind that it’s almost 8 p.m.

He looks tan and fit. At 49, it’s all still there, the heavy brow, the blue eyes – one darker than the other after a virus damaged his left iris – the slightly slurry speech, the dark blonde hair parted neatly on the side, albeit a little thinner at the top. He’s still every bit the former Oranje captain who starred for Ajax and FC Barcelona as one of the best defenders of his generation.

The legendary long balls and free kicks are still there too. “He still has quality,” says Atlanta’s technical director Carlos Bocanegra, a former U.S. national team captain.

View photos Frank de Boer has made concessions in managing talents like Ezequiel Barco, but it's paying off. (Getty) More

In some ways, Frank de Boer is different.

He’s learned to adapt. He knows it can’t always be his way, as it had been at Ajax – where his way was also the club’s way, after 15 years there as a player and another decade as a coach, during which he won four Eredivisie titles.

The famously competitive de Boer tends to stay after practice to hit free kicks around a dummy wall. Sometimes with a staffer in goal. Often with 20-year-old attacking midfielder Ezequiel Barco. According to witnesses, he’s still got that, too. But he saves it for after practice now, one of the adjustments he’s made after his brief stint with Palace, where his frequent and zealous participation in practice apparently grated on some players.

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