Bob Bradley The New U.S. Soccer Coach
After Juergen Klinsmann withdrew from US Soccer consideration for US Socer Coach, Bob Bradley finally choose as a new coach of US Soccer Team on an interim basis job. “Bob has a potential capability to coach the national team,” said Sunil Gulati, The President of US Soccer Federation.
Bradley will starts to proof his capability with exhibitions games against Denmark on Jan. 20 and Mexico on Feb. 7. He isn’t even guaranteed of leading the national team in its two big tournaments next summer: the CONCACAF Gold Cup and the Copa America — but at the very least will get the consolation prize of coaching the U.S. Under-23 team as it tries to qualify for the 2008 Olympics.
Klinsmann, who coached Germany to the World Cup semifinals, essentially had been the only candidate the USSF had been dealing with. A member of Germany’s World Cup championship team in 1990, he lives in California and would have instantly increased the level of respect for U.S. soccer among its opponents. When he withdrew Thursday, Klinsmann wouldn’t go into details on why a deal couldn’t be closed. Gulati also was circumspect.
“There’s a lot of hurdles in trying to get an agreement and trying to get a working relationship done, and we cleared many of them and weren’t able to clear all of them. And at some point you run out of time, and that’s where we ended up,” Gulati said. “We agreed on many, many things. He and I agreed on just about everything, I guess is the best way of putting it. But in the end you’ve got to agree on everything and we ran out of time in trying to agree on everything.”
Gulati said Klinsmann left open the possibility of a relationship at some point.
Bradley coached D.C. United assistant in 1996, then coached Major League Soccer’s
Chicago Fire, MetroStars and Chivas USA teams.
“I have advantages that others don’t have,” Bradley said. “I want to make sure that those things count, that in the next six months they show in the play of the team, and then we see where that takes us.”
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