Red Bulls Hire Petke
The New York Red Bulls ended their search for a new head coach by hiring former player and assistant coach Mike Petke. Petke is the latest American to be named head coach of a Major League Soccer team after playing professionally in the league. He joins D.C. United’s Ben Olsen, New England’s Jay Heaps and Real Salt Lake’s Jason Kries as one of the league’s “young guns.”
Islanders Won’t Play
The early announcement said that the Puerto Rico Islanders would take off the spring season to reorganize and return for the second half of the NASL’s 2013 split season. Turns out they will take the entire year off to restructure their operations and return to action in 2014.
The Islanders have been in the league for nine years with much success as a club in the CONCACAF Championship Leagues. The club won the 2010 and 2011 Caribbean club championships.
New NASL Teams
The North American Soccer League took advantage of Indianapolis hosting the National Soccer Coaches Association of America convention in January, and announced that Indianapolis would field a team in the league in 2014.
Heading up the Indianapolis team is former Chicago Fire executive Peter Wilt.
The Calvary FC, based in Northern Virginia, will come on board in 2014, along with the first Canadian-based NASL franchise in Ottawa.
The NASL has been an eight-team league, but drops to seven with Puerto Rico taking 2013 off. The New York Cosmos will bring the league back to eight in the second half of the 2013 season, and the three expansion teams, plus the expected return of the Islanders, will bring the league to 12 for the 2014 season.
Toronto Hires Ryan Nelsen
When Toronto FC hired Queens Park Rangers defender Ryan Nelsen as the team’s next head coach, replacing Paul Mariner, Nelsen was still a player for QPR.
Nelsen has never coached at any level. The New Zealander does have an interesting collegiate playing record. He played for two years at Greensboro College, a Division III school in North Carolina. He completed his collegiate career with two years at Stanford.
His professional career began with D.C. United of Major League Soccer. He then moved on to the English Professional League, while beginning a successful international career with New Zealand’s National Team.
His starting time table to move to Canada took a hit when QPR refused to release Nelsen from his contreact before the EPL season was over, and by then Major League Soccer would be a couple of months into the season.
So how did Nelsen resolve the problem? Simple. It had already been worked out between the two clubs. QPR was working the market to find a new center back to replace Nelsen, hoping to strike a deal before prices went up when teams reralized QPR had a “need” rather than a “want.”
All has been resolved, and Nelsen is with the club and his career as a professional soccer coach has gotten underway.