Bob Bradley is an Americn soccer success story. He grew up in New Jersey and was an outstanding high school player at West Essex HS. He played collegiate soccer at nearby Princeton.
Rather than go off into the corportate world like many of his Princeton classmates, he decided he wanted to be a soccer coach. He [show_disconnected][show_to accesslevel=’Subscriber’]entered the renowned sports management graduate program at Ohio University and became the youngest Division I men’s soccer coach there in 1981.
What followed was a stint on Bruce Arena’s staff as an assistant at Virginia, then being named the men’s coach at Princeton, taking his Tigers to the NCAA Division I Final Four where they lost to Virginia in the semifinals.
Eventually, he accepted the call to coach at the professional level, first as Arena’s assistant at DC United and then the head coach of the expansion Chicago Fire.
Success bred opportunity, and US Soccer hired him in 2006, first as the head U23 (Olympic) coach, and eventually manager of the men’s national team where he guided the Americans to qualifiation for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
Successful at every step of the way, Bradley will be honored by the NSCAA on Saturday, Jan. 18 at the All-America Luncheon with this year’s Honorary AllAmerica Award.
After his five years as U.S. MNT coach, Bradley took the Pharaohs of Egypt to the brink of qulification for the 2014 World Cup, losing to Ghana on aggregate goals in a home-and-home series.
He recently became the first American head coach of a European top-flight club and the first American at any professional level in Norway’s history when he was named manager of Norwegian Tippeligaen club Stebaek.
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