Friday, December 08, 2006

Bradley is the new boss, for now

Bob Bradley is the new coach of the US men's national team. However, this is only an interim appointment, as US Soccer will continue to look at other possible candidates for, blah, blah, blah.

Unless Bradley really screws up really, really big or someone very high profile decides that I want to coach the team and I'm find with having little control over things (ie. I'll take the paycheck in run "hello Sven, I'll put you right through"), it will probably be Bradley guiding the team into 2010.

Bradley is a very good coach and I can see him building well on Arena's success. Had this hire happened in July or August, I think people would have been fine with it, especially since his name was mentioned as a replacement for Arena well before the World Cup made the Bruce a 'loser' and Klinsmann 'the second coming.'

However, after a five-month search, ending up where you started does not look good.

That said, Bradley has a difficult task ahead of him. He has a team that has not been together in a long time and that has some obvious cracks in it. Will he be able to bring them together and motivate?

When Arena took over the job after the 1998 flop he faced similar problems and was able to worth through most of them. Hopefully during all those years assisting Arena at U of Virginia and DC United, Bradley learned some of his tricks. If his work on Chivas this past season (not to mention his time with Chicago) is an example of what we can expect, it should be an interesting ride.

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