The former U.S. national team captain is now the technical director of Atlanta's MLS franchise, and he spoke to ASN about the expansion team's ambitious plan to build a winner in the ATL.

BY Brian Sciaretta Posted

April 22, 2015

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CARLOS BOCANEGRA IS ACCUSTOMED to leadership roles, and he has the armbands to prove it.

The 35-year-old California native served as captain of the United States men's national team for six years, and during his tenure the Americans won the 2007 Gold Cup, advanced to the finals of the 2009 Confederations Cup, and won its first-ever World Cup group in 2010. The 2000 MLS Rookie of the Year and two-time MLS Defender of the Year also wore the captain's armband for three European clubs: Fulham, Glasgow Rangers, and Saint-Etienne.

Bocanegra returned to MLS in 2013 to play for Chivas USA, retiring after the 2014 season. Last month he accepted the technical director position for the new—and still nameless—MLS expansion team in Atlanta that will begin play in 2017.

American Soccer Now spoke to the former UCLA star about his decision to sign with Atlanta, his vision for the club, and how he and the management group intend to make Atlanta a model franchise. The below interview was lightly edited.

BRIAN SCIARETTA FOR ASN: When did you decide this was the right path for you?

CARLOS BOCANEGRA: Sort of midway through my career, after I was in Europe for a year or so. I always thought about what was going to happen afterward. When I was younger, I was just playing and enjoying it. Then you get into your career a little bit and you start thinking about tactical things, substitutions, how our locker room should be, how things can be improved, and things like that.

When you’re at different clubs you experiences things—some are good and some are bad. I started to think that I wanted to stay in the game for sure when I’m finished. This was kind of a natural evolution where I was playing the game as one of the leaders on the team and the natural path was to stay involved in this sort of role.

ASN: What was it about the Atlanta setup that convinced you to sign on there?

BOCANEGRA: I had the opportunity to speak with a few clubs as my career was winding down and in the months after I retired. First and foremost, when I met face to face with Darren [Eales] and the Atlanta franchise, he’s a very impressive individual. We shared a lot of the same vision and our thought process was similar in how we’d like to go about doing things.

We hit it off from the start. For me that was very, very important. He’s a soccer guy and has tons of experience at the executive level. Coming in as a young guy with no experience, he’s going to be a fantastic person for me to learn from in this role. He was a huge influence on me coming out here and wanting to take this job.

Besides that, learning about [Arthur] Blank, his corporation, and how he does things with the Falcons, his AMB Group, and his involvement in the community. He does everything first class. He’s willing to commit the resources and make it the best it could possibly be. The 20,000 deposits already for season tickets by the founders club, the first-class stadium being built, being a chance to contribute to the design and the layout of the training facility, everything seemed like I could not pass this situation up.

All the employees that I’ve spoken to who work for the Falcons or the AMB Group, everybody has positive things to say about their experience working here. Many of them have been here for years which in the sports industry doesn’t always happen. It felt like the right place to be and I am so happy that I made this choice.

ASN: What are your responsibilities as the technical director? Will you make decisions on players, coaches, staff, designated players?

BOCANEGRA: I’m the technical director and I will oversee all non-coaching day-to-day, soccer-specific operations. At the moment, since we do not have a first team, I’ll be helping put our academy structure in place. Later I’ll be helping with player acquisitions, helping decide who to bring in as a coach—all sorts of those things will be a joint effort. Darren will ultimately have the final say but it will be a collaborative effort with myself, Darren, and whoever else we bring in to help build our team and help develop our scouting network.

ASN: Are you still running the CB3 Performance Center?

BOCANEGRA: No. It was getting to be too much for me to handle. It’s still going and I think the kids enjoy it out there in California. It’s still going very well. I wanted to commit myself and be fully involved here in Atlanta.

ASN: You said you and Darren Eales share a similar vision. What is that vision?

BOCANEGRA: The biggest thing for me is creating a culture here for our team and creating the tradition. That will set the tone for this season and many seasons to come. That’s why I think this is such a unique opportunity to be part of an expansion franchise—setting it up from scratch where we can establish that culture from the beginning. That will come with the people we bring in to work with us in leadership positions, the staff, the players, and every single person at the club.

We want it to be a family atmosphere where everybody feels like they’re a part of something. Whether you’re the front office staff or you’re the door guy at the training ground, you’re just as much a part of the team as the first-team superstar. That’s the kind of atmosphere we want to create.

From that, we want to go out and get winners. We want to get hard workers and good guys in the locker room who can also handle themselves out in the community. So those are really the most important characteristics or traits we are looking for at the moment. As it gets a little closer to when we start playing in 2017, we’ll start lining up players and trying to bring in players who fit those specific qualities which are going to be the core of not only the team, but the club.

ASN: MLS has seen teams like Seattle and Vancouver do very well. Then you have teams like Toronto which has never made the playoffs. What will it take for Atlanta to be a winning team inside of its first few seasons?

BOCANEGRA: We are actually going to be going around the league and visiting quite a few of the recent expansion teams—Portland, Seattle, NYCFC, and Orlando. We want to learn what they have done well and not duplicate their mistakes. To be fair, right from the beginning, everybody has been great with sharing information. All the other clubs are saying, 'This worked very well for us from the beginning” and “If we had another chance, maybe we wouldn’t go this route.”

We’ll take all that information. You have to look at a team like Seattle that has been so successful. We’ll visit them as well. We’ll have a good look at all the details as to what makes that environment so successful. Of course we’ll put our own spin on it but we’re really just trying to learn and take it all in.

ASN: You have a long time to go until you play a game in March 2017. What is your timeline in putting this team together? Do you have any benchmarks you want to reach in 2015 and and 2016? Is there a blueprint?

BOCANEGRA: We have a little bit of a blueprint and a timeline structure but as you know, in soccer, things are always changing. Nothing is ever set in stone. This year we’re looking at setting up the structure for the academy, stadium operations, and finding a training ground site to get that working. That is very important because that’s where players live and breathe. We want them to be happy there and we want that to be a first-class place. That is first and foremost.

It looks like next season we will be setting up our academy and having them play. Again, things could change. That could be a little bit sooner. There are a lot of variables at play. As far as a coach goes, we’re thinking summer of 2016 but again if something comes up before, nothing is set in stone. That’s a little bit of our soft timeline. We’re still learning and we might have something set in our minds and then we visit one of these clubs and they say, 'This worked for us and this didn’t.' We might go in another direction. That’s the beauty of not having the first team play for more than a year-and-a-half.

ASN: When you look at the two new expansion teams you see David Villa, Frank Lampard, and Kaka—well-known players who still can play at a very high level but are also very expensive. We’ve also seen a recent growing trend of pricy designated player contracts go to U.S. national team players. What is Atlanta’s appetite and approach going to be in the designated player market? Is it going to have a big budget and will American players be rated as highly as we’ve seen recently by other MLS teams?

BOCANEGRA: Here’s what I will tell you about that right now: We are open to all options and all opportunities. We are so far away right now from even signing a player that we’re exploring every option. We’re listening to everybody. The cool thing I will say is that we’ve had a lot of interest from players and coaches already. I think you guys will be pleasantly surprised to hear once the names come out eventually.

ASN: You’ve talked about Atlanta’s academy. How important will this academy be to the first team? Do you envision homegrown signings to become an important building block for your team?

BOCANEGRA: That is correct. The academy is very important to us in a salary capped league like MLS. When you can get a homegrown guy, you benefit with the salary cap and it also means you’ve done a pretty good job of helping to develop local talent. That’s very important and it’s something we want to do. It doesn’t always happen overnight but our long-term vision is to develop homegrown players and have a feeder system.

Our academy teams will be working very closely with the first team. There’s not going to be any disconnect and we want that to be a smooth transition. Everybody is going to be speaking with each other and that is going to be a big part of my job as a liaison between the first team and the academy teams to make sure we’re all on the same page. We want to treat our academy players as young professionals. There are a lot of variables but the idea is to have our academy team up and running before the first team plays.

ASN: Atlanta is going to be playing in an NFL Stadium. That has worked in Seattle but hasn't always worked out with other MLS franchises. There are 20,000 season ticket deposits but what will the environment be like at games?

BOCANEGRA: Arthur Blank has invested in drop-down curtains from the ceiling. You know how in Seattle they put the banners over the sections of seats? Here they’re going to have drop-down curtains so you’re not going to see any of that. It will be much more intimate. He’s also invested in retractable stands so we’ll have a full FIFA-width soccer field.

He’s done a good job and the MLS team is definitely not a secondary thought. It’s two separate entities and he’s taking both very seriously, which is fantastic for us. With the support group in place, we’re looking to create something that is pretty special and we'll have an amazing atmosphere in place inside the stadium. That not only attracts more fans and gets more interests but also the guys on the field will want to be a part of it and want to play here.

Brian Sciaretta is an American Soccer Now columnist and an ASN 100 panelist. Follow him on Twitter.