Thoughts from Bob Bradley on a remarkable coaching journey

The coaching life of Bob Bradley is really quite extraordinary.

The 62-year old New Jersey native and former U.S. Men’s National Team coach has managed in Egypt, Norway, France and Wales.

He is currently in his third year at LAFC – the fifth MLS team he has guided in his 40 years as a professional coach.

Bradley was the first American to coach in a European top division at Stabaek and was the first American to manage in the English Premier League at Swansea City.

Bradley and his wife, Lindsay lived in Egypt during a civil war while he attempted to lead the Pharaohs to the 2014 World Cup.

The couple has a famous son named Michael who played for his father on the USMNT and grew up with the game in kick-arounds as a six-year old with the young men at Princeton University.

Bob Bradley coached for 11 years at Princeton after beginning his coaching journey at Ohio University.

Northwestern University coach Tim Lenahan hosted a webinar recently with Bradley – nearly 200 collegiate coaches were in attendance for a wide-ranging discussion. 

Bradley is open, opinionated and offered some valuable advice for coaches - and I’ve got much of that captured here. 

How are you occupying his time?

I’ve been exchanging sessions with some of my coaching comrades on HUDL. We’ll put the same clip in front of all of us. Then start it,  stop it and talk about some of the things we see –doing it all on zoom. Each guy takes the lead on different clips with a shared screen. That’s been good. The way we engage each other and watch clips. It’s something we don’t do enough in this country.

I’m also a Kaiser bike expert now.

You are described as intense – as noted in the “We are LAFC” documentary.

Years ago, I would have said no to that, I don’t want anyone hanging around. But we did the two (documentaries) in Egypt so I was more comfortable with it.

I am who I am. I always hear the bit about intense but I’m not sure it’s the right word. I try to be real - I try to be honest. Nothing I ever do is scripted – I don’t play act. 

You coached Jesse Marsch at Princeton and the Chicago Fire.

(Note: Princeton is Bradley’s alma mater and they advanced to the Final Four in 1993 and Marsch, a 1995 All-American for the Tigers is currently the coach at Red Bull Salzburg)

I find it interesting the number of coaches my age who were influenced by Milan. We decided at the end of one season that we were going to change the way we play. Every day I reintroduced the game to these guys. Even though Jesse was ineligible he’d play for the second team and helped the team out.

I still have big arguments with Jesse today because when he tells me about Red Bull, what they believe as a team and I’ll say, none of those things are new. He doesn’t like to hear that – it’s more about how far you take these ideas. You’re always trying to think about what kind of identity you want for your team.

You joined Bruce Arena as an assistant in 1996 at D.C. United PLUS the U.S. Olympic team. What was that like?

Bruce was crazy for accepting both jobs. It was me, Bruce, Mooch (Glenn “Mooch” Myernick) - three guys in an apartment together off the I-5 in Chula Vista. Bruce and I are different personalities and each one thought he knew more than the other guy. We worked very well together but we don’t see it the same way. It’s not that his ideas are not right, it’s just things that over the years I believe in.

One of things I think I’m good at is engaging the people around me. I want to hear what people say and I challenge them. I want them to back it up. I need guys around me that are up for that.

You won the first two MLS Cups with Arena and then became the head coach at the expansion Chicago Fire in 1998 and defeated Arena and D.C. United to win MLS Cup. Peter Nowak was the MVP of that game.

Our first signing was Peter Nowak. It meant a lot for the city to have the captain of the Polish team. I explained the league and the challenges to him and he was a great captain. He turned 34 that summer but he still had a good engine.  

We had an incredible balance of the experienced guys and the younger Americans. Zach Thornton, (Chris) Armas, (Jesse) Marsch, C.J. (Brown), (Josh) Wolff, (Ante) Razov. Man, we really had good players with a good, competitive environment. There was an edge to the team that fit with the city. We weren’t afraid of anything.

You had some big personalities during your time with the Fire – Hristo Stoichkov for instance.

If you coach guys that have been around the world and you look scared coaching them, you don’t have a chance. You've got to hold your big guys just as accountable as your young guys. I still see coaches at a professional level go off on young guys but they never say anything to the other guys. 

I have a great relationship with Hristo - he and I traded messages yesterday. But that relationship was not built on me being in awe of him. I just think it's real and honest and being confident in who you are. And I make plenty of mistakes but I always make mistakes by saying what I think is right for the group. 

A player will come back to me and say you know you were too hard on us we're doing better than that and so maybe it was my misinterpretation of something. It was the feeling that we're all in it together with an ability to admit ‘man I fucked that up and I was wrong.’ I think that's all part of how you build something, and that's what those Chicago teams were all about.

It’s incredible the number of guys that are still involved in the game. 

 (Note: from the ’98 MLS Cup champs currently coaching, Marsch, Salzburg; Armas, RBNY; Brown, RBNY; Thornton, D.C. United; Wolff, Austin; Razov, LAFC; Nowak, Lechia Gdansk; Frank Klopas, Chicago Fire; Tom Soehn, Birmingham Legion)

What can you say about your son, Michael?

(Note: Michael Bradley, in his 17th season as a professional, has 151 caps for the USMNT and started his professional career playing for his father with the NY/NJ MetroStars).

At the MetroStars, Michael didn't drive in with me because I went in early so we didn’t have any of those car conversations.

What I would say about Michael - it's just a case from the time he was little he was around the game. There's guys on this call that saw him at camps when he was five years old and six years old. I would always tell him, you can come and hang around sometimes but if you act like a little shit then guys are not gonna have time for you. People will either give you time or they'll think that you're just a spoiled little kid. And I think he understood what it meant to be around teams.

Jesse (Marsch) and Chris (Armas) saw Michael hanging around and they'd let him play. Quite early he figured out that if I get in these games and I try all sorts of stupid things they are not going to let me play. 

How do you describe him as a player?

Years ago, when Claudio (Reyna) was the (US Soccer) Youth Technical Director he made a point to me that we don't have enough players who can receive and play quickly. And I said wait a minute, I agree with that but if you look at Tab (Ramos) over here you could say we don't have enough players who can make advantages on their own. There are some kids that from an early age have an ability to do things on their own like Clint Dempsey. Then eventually you have to help them understand how to play with other guys. And then there would be other kids that somehow from an early age have a better idea of how to play with people around them. And that would be Michael. If you coached a young team and you had one young version of Clint and one young version of Michael it'd be a challenge to try to help the young Clint without losing any of the individual creativity while trying to help him understand a little bit about how to play with other guys while you’d always be challenged to help the young Michael understand how to be able to do a little more on his own.

So, maybe Michael didn’t stand out the same way.

You know he got recruited a little bit in college but most college coaches didn't think he was any good. Not all of you but many of you. And one conversation I had with him was simple. I said I think you can become a good pro but you're not a protege. You're going to be a late bloomer. And I think if I've ever been wrong about one thing, it happened earlier than I would have thought. But he loves the game and he still works hard. He’s always understood how to do things the right way. To this day, there's some people who can see what he's all about as a player and there's a lot who can't. That is what it is.

 You were named USMNT coach in late 2006 after years as a club coach. 

(Note: It was widely reported that Bradley was the second choice after US Soccer President Sunil Gulati was unable to convince Jurgen Klinsmann to take the job).

Everybody talks about the difference between coaching the club team and coaching with a national team because you don't have the players every day. Of course, that's true but somehow you've got to make sure that we have this idea of identity every time we come into a camp. How will we talk to each other? How will we work to establish a real way of doing things? One thing that was said over and over is that it was bigger than any one of us. 

What is an example of what you liked about your National Team experience?

I think we created a mentality as a team to make it hard on the other team. The game against Costa Rica (2009 WC Qualifier) was on YouTube the other night and I got some messages during it. We were down 2-0 and that was right after Charlie (Davies) had been in the car accident. And we fought back and we tied 2-2. What I'm proud of always is for the people who are on the inside of those teams. The way we worked, the way we played. I think we had a real sense of what we were about.

The federation didn’t see it that way.

I think our football was better than anyone gave us credit for - especially the big shots. But we all deal with that. For me, the part that you can't control is what other people say or do. I’ve been fired three times. Getting fired and saying to yourself you know that I did things the right way and I don't care. You know I'm lucky somehow that I had those qualities and when they've been tested they always came through. So, I think that's important for coaches on all levels.

What do you think of Gregg Berhalter?

I'm not around with Gregg but I know him. I'm so old that I had him when he was 16 on the NJ ODP team. One time, we were out at ODP camp at Penn State and he needed a ride home so I drove him home. And even at 16 he loved talking about football. He asked a lot of questions. So, I'm rooting for him. 

You were in the midst of a revolution when you coached Egypt after Mubarak was forced from office.

Yeah, two incredible years. There was a riot at a league match and 74 fans were killed at the stadium. The league was shut down and the players didn't know what was happening with their careers and we had a World Cup qualifier five months later. And we could not play games in Egypt but we could still have camps. We would have these camps outside of Cairo stadium because that was the only place we could train. We stayed in this little hotel because the guy who owned the hotel had a relationship with the team manager of the national team and he would let us stay there for free.

(Note: There are two documentaries that tell the amazing story of the events in Egypt under Bradley – American Pharaoh on YouTube and We Must Go on Amazon Prime).

And now you are back in MLS with LAFC.

The one thing I made clear is that I'm only coming back if it's a place where I can take my ideas and my experiences and my vision and turn it into something. If you don't agree, then find somebody else. So, you know, I wanted to be really clear on what kind of team we would have what kind of football we would play that if we lost a game or two we weren't going to change how we were going to play. 

And so, the chance to work in a place where we've got an incredible training facility, the stadium is awesome. The stadium is grass. We wet the field before the game we wet the field at halftime. We can do all the things to try to play good football.

You are a big Springsteen fan – what’s your favorite song?

It depends on the day but right now it's “Ties That Bind”. Well, my favorite one is “Thunder Road.” But at the moment what sounds calm is “Ties That Bind.”

(Note: In “American Pharaoh” Lindsay Bradley sends her husband a recording of “Land of Hopes and Dreams” before an African WC qualifier against Ghana).

Who is your biggest coaching influence?

Manfred (Schellscheidt) has always helped me connect the dots in the game and is still one of my greatest friends. You know the amount of time that I've spent with him over the years the discussions that we've had - he's a phenomenal guy. His understanding of the game and his understanding of how you learn. I always put him first and foremost on that list