photo by Joe Toth/ISIphotos.com
When it comes to Americans, It appears Fulham is interested in more than just players.
U.S. national team head coach Bob Bradley is on Fulham's shortlist to succeed manager Roy Hodgson, who joined Liverpool late last week.
While Bradley is not considered the favorite to land the job, he would make history for becoming the first American to land a head coaching job with a European club if he wound up as the Cottagers' coach.
Sven-Goran Eriksson and Mark Hughes are also reportedly being considered, with Eriksson currently Fulham's top choice.
What do you think of Bradley possibly coaching Fulham? Think he would succeed? How much do you think this could help open the door for other American coaches in Europe?
Share your thoughts below.
“Warren said in reply to jig… -Coached a lightly regarded team to 3rd place at World Cup – everyone forgets that NO established coach would come near the Germany squad for 2006, due to the pressure of playing at home, and the perceived lack of talent.”
Klinsmann himself said that Germans always expect the team will at least reach the semifinals of every competition they enter. So by German standards, their 2006 finish was the minimum acceptable.
“Coached FC Hollywood to 2nd in bundesliga before being relieved of duty – for not being in 1st.”
Van Gaal took pretty much that exact same team to the 2010 Champions league final.
“Played at highest level in England, Italy.”
Doesn’t mean he is a great coach (see Ruud Gullit, Marco Van Basten, Maradona for examples). If he could play for us that would be something else.
“Values US training methods, and (some) US players – like Landon whom he stuck his neck out for only to have the backstabbers use that as an excuse to take him down.”
So does Bradley.
“Anyway, Klinsi is the man ready to take US to another level. Other international coaches with his resume don’t know the US and its needs half as well.”
I can’t see him taking the US any further than Bradley, except for one thing, he would inherit a team of young, experienced World Cup vets (Bradley did not), Donovan and Dempsey are more proven, and there is new young talent coming up in the next year or two.
“To really shake things up, as he did with Germany”
Did it ever occur to you the guy who really did all that is the present coach Juergen Low?
I like Klinsmann and I would have no problem with him as US coach but I don’t necessarily see him as a major upgrade over Bradley.
His coaching resume is pretty thin and is not necessarily superior to Bradley’s. It is more glamorous but glamour doesn’t always win you games. Plus, I can’t see him being into what will be a long boring 4 year slog.
Agree w/ this 10000000%. Took Germany to the semis (the reference to ‘3rd place’ is comical) IN GERMANY. Fantastic. You may have noticed this huge thing in soccer called home field advantage. The only thing going for Klinsi is his obviously love for American players. That and the foreign name.
Find it very difficult to believe with the other managers being linked and a complete lack of quotes.
Quite frankly Bradley is not up there (yet?) in terms of tactics to handle the Premier League.
If he’s smart he starts in League 1 or CC. Or he assists a proper manager to learn the trade.
Managers are different than MLS coaches and are expected to know a lot more and do a million times more. Plus with a team like Fulham, who are full with talented players who are being linked away, you need a manager with enough pedigree to keep the team together. No one is staying for Robo Bob, especially after what happened at the World Cup. Shoot even Dempsey doesn’t play for Robo when he plays for the national team 😉
Obvious troll is obvious.
But just in case you’re not:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaming_%28Internet%29
And cracked the code to allow defeats (with some luck) of Spain. Of course that may have been the Canary in the coalmine moment for Spain… they’ve been only intermittently excellent since.
I think Sven is an easy target because he took that Notts County job, which made him look like a joke. And he did fine in Mexico, but that’s not good enough. They only looked like they were in trouble because they had played more road games.
Most countries don’t win the World Cup either. Just because that is what happens every place else, doesn’t mean it’s a good thing.
That probably has more to do with those coaches, like the players, using the World Cup as a showcase for a better job.
“Murphy said in reply to rob…
It was a joke, but I still think its a fair comment. Bradley consistently has shown a commitment to playing a few guys even if they make mistakes or aren’t playing well. ”
Bradley gave more new guys chances than any previous USA coach. Jay Demerit said as much. If you think a player should be discarded after making a mistake then you severely overestimate the depth of the US talent pool. There would not have been anybody left to send to SA.
“I should have added Findley to that list (the most recent example). I’m still amazed that Klejstan wasn’t on the World Cup roster. Clark was given another chance vs. Ghana after a poor match vs. England and Edu was playing better. Bornstein played well at the World Cup but he continued to make mistakes all of last year and was always given multiple chances.”
Put yourself in the place of a World Cup coach. The average player usually plays a game a week, once every 7 days. At the World Cup the US played games on June 12, June 18, June 23 and June 26th. All of them were pressure packed games and probably more wearing than your average league match. The US had 3 must start players, Howard, Donovan and Dempsey. Bradley is also almost at that level. The rest of the guys are interchangeable. And the Ghana game was three days after the Algeria match.
Edu had just played 46 minutes against Slovenia and 64 minutes against Algeria. Three days is not a lot of time to rest up so why not play Clark who is the best remaining DM , and is fresh.
And if you tell me that tired Edu, who is not that great at keeping possession in the first place would not have made the same mistake that Clark did, I’ll say can you guarantee me that? Would you bet your house on that? I wouldn’t. And before you tell me that Bradley admitted his mistake by subbing out Clark, my read is he did so because Clark got that card and Bradley was concerned that Clark might try to make up for the mistake and then follow it up with a second yellow. Besides, Bradley put the team in place to win the game and had they converted their chances in the second half they should have won the game.
The US lost to Ghana because Howard is not the super keeper everyone says he is and blew a simple save on the first goal and the US couldn’t convert its many second half chances.
You act as if the US should have easily won all these games when the reality is there were almost no easy games for anyone in the World Cup. Did you watch New Zealand, supposedly the worst team in the tournament? Ghana is a fine team, look at their roster and see where they play. Did you think we were playing a pub team?
“But to give up early goals in 3 of 4 World Cup games and make poor lineup choices in the crucial (winnable) match vs. Ghana makes me think the team needs a change”
So if a game is “winnable” does it mean you screwed up because you didn’t win it? Again do you really think Ghana , who played Germany very well were pushovers? Or did they just show up and go “Oh, it’s a Bradley coached team, he’ll just give it to us”. Really?
The players give up those early goals, not Bradley. As for the poor lineup choices, I didn’t hear one word of that until the Ghana game was over.
The biggest change the US needs is better players.
“Coached a lightly regarded team to 3rd place at World Cup.”
You lost me after the first sentence.
Germany = lightly regarded. Are you high?
A 3 time champion, on home soil, that finished second in the ’02 Cup?
Regular upstarts there. A real Cinderella story.
And he got s*itcanned from Bayern Munich after the ’08-’09 season. Quick quiz….. what did Bayern Munich do this year? Oh, right. They won the Bundesliga, German Cup and appeared in a CL final for the first time since ’01.
That’s his “track record.” Forgive me if I don’t get all tingly.
Maybe he’ll make Freddy Adu the captain as his first act as head coach.
+2 K-Town
If you look at our team on paper, the teams our guys play for, and the success of out team, I think Bob’s record speaks for itself. I haven’t always been a fan of some of Bob’s tactics, but at the end of the day it’s about winning games, and there’s no denying his success there.
If not Fulham, I’m think Bob will get a job somewhere else. I’m sure the clubs are taking notice.
THANK YOU!!! It’s truly refreshing to hear someone else say what I and a number of my friends have been saying what seems like foreva and I also coach kids who are poor as well as those whom are wealthy, the hunger comes from within each child not because a kid is poor or wealthy. If that were the case we wouldn’t have a gang problem in this country.
Dream on. Klinsmann has better things to do.
Can you guarantee me that Edu would have maintained possession better than Clark? Eu was giving the bal away a lot in his games.
Coached a lightly regarded team to 3rd place at World Cup – everyone forgets that NO established coach would come near the Germany squad for 2006, due to the pressure of playing at home, and the perceived lack of talent.
Coached FC Hollywood to 2nd in bundesliga before being relieved of duty – for not being in 1st.
Played at highest level in England, Italy.
Values US training methods, and (some) US players – like Landon whom he stuck his neck out for only to have the backstabbers use that as an excuse to take him down.
Anyway, Klinsi is the man ready to take US to another level. Other international coaches with his resume don’t know the US and its needs half as well.
The reason Sunil wouldn’t hire him last time were 1) money and 2) control.
Sunil needs to get out of the way, since with this Cup’s ESPN ratings, there has to be the money available. To really shake things up, as he did with Germany.
There is a reason national teams very rarely retain the coach from one cycle to the next.
US should start to act like everyone elsee and assume a coach is out unless there are extraordinary circumstances.
I don’t see any, BB should be thanked and wished good luck, and take another job. It’s not to say he might not get another shot for the 2018 or 2022 cycle, which again teams like Brazil are known to rehire – after a period – the same coach who did well.
AFTER the team is refreshed and experiences another coaching style.
+ 100
Klinsi is waiting in the wings.
And sometime prior to that,Hodgson coached Inter, just like BB…oh yeah that’s a bit different resume.
Still, Bob has shown capacity to learn and improve, so yeah i could see this happening.
No, but he will dribble
can someone explain what exactly the attraction is to klinnsman as a coach?
And the rest of the world thinks of Americans that way…..
As far as ‘soccer’ is concerned, most big fans & players of the game here in this country often call it Football when talking to the initiated.
We only call it soccer in situations where some fool will make a point of it if we had called it Football.
BTW- does Australia get as much stick for calling it soccer? or is it just US because we created own game of highly skilled meatheads and called it Football
fulham should most definitely hire hughes. he’s a great coach who did amazing at blackburn and the citeh fiasco was largely his fault but he did have some things out of his control that helped do him in. hed proably be great at fulham. good luck to bradley though if he does get it. i think erikkson is a terrible hire. his last stint in english football as a manager at citeh was way below par.
I know I have been accused of being a Bradley hater, but I will put my full support behind any European team he coaches. I don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t. I still believe we need a coach for the USMNT who has more understanding of international tactics. I can never get that article out of my mind of some of the European based players reporting to national team camp and wondering why they were being told to run around cones like little kids. Klinsmann will immediately have everyone’s full respect. US players like Bradley, but I don’t think they respect his pedigree.
I know he’ll be older, but maybe we can hire BB again for 2018 after he gets a little more experience?
lol. Mason, you aren’t the brightest bulb, are you?
Baby LanDo & CRjr 2030!!!!!!!
(2026??!??!?)
Oh man I can just see it now. Those after the game interviews they do on Sky Sports. That will be the hilarious with the crazy English press and Bob pretty much spewing out 3 minutes of not saying much at all.
your number sequence embarrases fellow number sequenced themed names.
that is all.
I’ll only sign on the dotted line if I can bring Rico and Findley.
That is one and only demand, Fulham. I await your response.
Mark Hughes is probably a better choice than Bradley, but Sven is not. But, I bet Fullham is looking at what Everton has done with an American-style training regimen and thinking they might do the same thing with an American manager.
Yeah BB did such a great job any team the USMNT was playing was likely to score inside of 10 minutes.
Ok, then Bob would change strategy to something more effective after getting us in a hole. but we can’t blame Bob.
And he always learned from his mistakes after he would repeat them several times, and say ‘noone could have expected Rico Clark to have difficulty maintaining possession’…except everyone who saw what happened against England, and watched the replay against Ghana. Everyone except BB.
But yeah, BB is the best of all possible USMNT coaches, and anyone who says differently is a hater.
Anyway, good luck to Bob with Fulham or another decent squad in Europe. And give Bob credit, the US job is now attractive enough quality folks like Klinsmann would take it – if Sunil & USSF promised to listen to them and stay out of their way.
If Shut Up Sven is named Fulham Manager, I’m changing my name to (Donovan’s or Dempsey’s team)Pete.
Sven is a nightmare of a coach, and to those who think BB doesn’t earn respect, the only place he’s not respected is in the USA. He’s admired internationally, because he’s taken a bunch of (perceived to be) skill-less hacks and turned them into a team that challenged, and nearly outplayed England, and apart from TWO disallowed goals, almost earned 7/9 points in the WC.
BB to Fulham! Awesome!
He could always pull a Rafa Benitez and wear a tie with his track suit.
I wish well for Bradley, so it would be great if Bradley would be the Fulham coach. That would be great to have the first American coach in Europe, and it would mean somebody else would be coaching the US team. Also maybe Bradley comes back in the future as a better coach.
For those of you that want Klinsmann as the next US coach I started a petition. Please go to the attached link, sign the petition, and let your voice be heard!
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/klinsmannasussoccercoach/
i can’t believe no one has said this yet. so i’ll take the lead:
:: ahem ::
(clears throat)
“SHUT UP SVEN!!!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOgewbO88wc
Brazil federation president (Ricardo Teixeira) said tonight that “the August game against the US will be the beginning of the preparation for 2014. Everyone should expect a very young team and not be surprised if we lose to the US.”
Interesting…
I really hope Bradley somehow gets this job, it would really do a lot for US soccer.
murphy–he has put 90 guys through camp. The reason for his “loyalty” is, in part, his commitment to a system. He explained his approach in an interview with Grant Wahl a few months back.
Personally, think Sven’s lucky horse shoe fell out of his pocket years ago. England, Mexico, and the Ivory Coast can be best described as decent, dreadful, and wow did you not understand those players.
This would be a dream situation, as Bob could bring Fulhamerica back and Sunil would be forced to look elsewhere (whatever you may think of Bob’s last cycle, coaches don’t tend to repeat success, eight years is a generation). Everybody wants Juergen, and I am no exception.
GTFO.
Actually one of its original nicknames was soccer. It came from as”soc”iation football, the official name of the game.
Will he pass the ball?
That’s what I’m worried about…him being fired if they lose two games in a row.
+999…
Sir Alfred Ramsey has a better winning percentage with England than Eriksson. And Ramsey managed for 113 to Sven’s 67. And won the World Cup.
Ron Greenwood, Glenn Hoddle and even Cappello have/had better winning percentages with England than Sven.
I am not a Sven fan. He got paid nearly 2 million pounds to coach the Ivory Coast, a very poverty stricken country, for 3 months. Everyone knows he’s a merc but comeon, does he have no shame?
Save the money on a “name” manager Fulham, give Bradley a try.
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Why not? You realize some British fans still call it soccer, and we are just a few days away from a WC final from Soccer City Stadium? The UK is about the ONLY English speaking country that doesn’t call it soccer. Bradley could reteach them the sport’s true name.
Shut up Sven!
Its hard to believe Bob gets consideration in Europe when I have never heard a rumor about Arena being considered for such positions. Perhaps Arena missed his opportunity after 2002 or he does not wish to live abroad. In any event, if I were a European club, Arena would be the top American coach on my list – hands down.
Anything that takes him away from the US team will be good. I dont care if they hate him as long as he’s gone. Lest anyone forgets … we were about minute from going 3 and out and he had the easiest draw we’ve had in the last 12 years.
Time for the USA to move on. He cannot take us any further