The New York Red Bulls have their new head coach, and they have turned to a coach with extensive ties to the Red Bull network.
The Red Bulls announced on Tuesday morning that they have hired Gerhard Struber as the team’s head coach. Struber will soon take the reins from interim head coach Bradley Carnell and mark the permanent replacement for former leader Chris Armas, who was dismissed in early September.
Struber joins the MLS club after most recently guiding English League Championship side Barnsley FC, which received an undisclosed fee from the Red Bulls in order to release the 43-year-old Austrian from his contract.
“Gerhard is a bright coach, and we’re very pleased to welcome him to the club,” said Red Bulls head of sport Kevin Thelwell in statement issued by the team. “Gerhard’s playing style and experience in youth development align with our philosophy and, above all, as a person he fits into our culture. We look forward to him getting here and working together to achieve the goals we have set as a club.”
A former Red Bull Salzburg midfielder who also served as a head coach at FC Liefering and Wolfsberger FC in Austria, Struber helped Barnsley narrowly avoid relegation last season with wins in their final two matches. Barnsley has begun the new season winless in its first four matches, with just one point out of a possible 12.
Struber takes over a young Red Bulls squad that is looking to get back into the upper echelon in Major League Soccer. The team is currently in seventh place in the Eastern Conference with a 6-7-2 record.
The Red Bulls have gone 3-3-0 since Armas was dismissed and Carnell took over, scoring 11 goals while conceding nine.
Struber is expected to join the Red Bulls soon, but is awaiting the pending receipt of his U.S. work visa. Five weeks remain in the 2020 MLS regular season, and the Red Bulls have eight matches left.
“I am looking forward to getting to know my new team, hopefully very soon.” said Struber in a team-issued statement. “We want to pursue very ambitious goals together and develop steadily. The challenge of working in MLS makes me proud and gives me massive motivation for a big opportunity.”
If the Red Bulls issue was coaching, this might be an interesting article. But the team suffers from lack of talent. A coach can’t fix that. The Red Bulls have a history of success with their youth program but it has fallen on hard times. Their selection of international players is mediocre at best. They need to hire a competent GM. There seems little hope of that.
personally i tend to find overrated coaches touted for barely avoiding relegation. a coach who drags a team to 17th of 20 so to speak is not necessarily the one to get you to first place in a first division.
i think the same thing on wagner that some people love.
Probably better to look at a complete body of work rather than a single statement without context. There is not nearly enough information in that one fact- “avoiding relegation”… regarding one season to conclude anything. Avoiding relegation w/ a poor organization and a lousy roster could be a huge accomplishment on one hand…. and an abject failure w/ a roster full of talent.
his history is coaching a bunch of youth teams and leaving teams in the middle of the year before finishing a season. the one time he stayed put on an adult team, he barely avoided relegation to League 1 his first season, only avoided it season 2 because wigan took a points hit, and at the moment was 21st without a win this new season. i am lost what the attraction is of that. i grant he probably got a poor card. but the consistency of poverty suggests his coaching impact is modest. it’s not like he steadily built them someplace. he got them just one side of the line and basically stayed there.
i also don’t see how that resume helps a better team win. it is a good resume for another team like fulham trying to avoid what otherwise seems inevitable.
to me there is actually some history of “plucky” coaches like moyes struggling with plum assignments. i don’t think they know how to manage to win every week. where if you gave ferguson aberdeen or mourinho porto he would win europe.
IV he is a RB Salzburg guy, corporate has sent him to make sure things are being done the Red Bull way. As you mentioned in the Aaronson story there hasn’t been a steady pipeline from NY to Salzburg and Leipzig so maybe they think this helps.
I think Wagner gets more credit for earning promotion but I see your point. I never understood why national team fans wanted to hire Sam Alerdyce. Struber worked for awhile in RB Salzburg youth set up so I think this a chance for RB to get him back in the system.