Bradley begins coaching career at New York Red Bulls with big ambition

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HARRISON, N.J. – Michael Bradley's ascent to the New York Red Bulls head coaching job was such a whirlwind that it is almost no wonder he fidgeted with the microphone in front of him several times on Monday before making his first-ever remarks as the head coach of a top-flight team.

In the span of seven months, he went from someone with roughly a year of experience as an assistant to the championship-winning head coach of the Red Bulls' MLS Next Pro team who quickly earned a promotion to the senior team, a series of moves he and the club's head of sport Julian de Guzman could not stop describing as "no-brainers." A unique set of intangibles perhaps accelerated Bradley's rise – he was a celebrated U.S. men's national team player who will formally begin his coaching journey in his home state and at the club he began his career at as a 16-year-old. Bradley does not plan to slow down much, though, as he begins to flesh out the tangibles in his first big break as a coach.

"Everybody has their own ways of thinking about things," he prefaced in a sit-down with CBS Sports, "[but] I still believe in a football that is faster and more dynamic."

Bradley is the face of a fresh start for the Red Bulls, arguably a natural fit for a team entering a rebuilding period after snapping U.S. professional sports' longest playoff streak last year, an ambitious choice for a group that has not waned in its talk of trophies. As de Guzman described it, though, the risk was worth taking.

"How do you take advantage of an opportunity when an individual like Michael doesn't come around very often?" de Guzman said. "For him to be available and ready and hungry for an opportunity like this, it wasn't a challenge by pulling him by both limbs and saying, 'Hey, we got to sell you a product here. This is great.' No. It's something he wants and it matched our identity as well."

'A team that's dynamic, aggressive'

Bradley is measured and thoughtful in conversation, de Guzman describing him as having a "calm confidence" that makes him an ideal leader. A fast pace, though, does not seem to trouble him – rather than opting to take a break after his 19-year playing career came to a close in 2023, he jumped straight into coaching as an assistant to his father, Bob, at Norway's Stabeak. It felt like a natural next step in more ways than one.

"The short answer is that I was scared," he admitted. "I was scared for a life without football. When you're used to doing something every single day, when it's the only thing you know, the part of thinking about life without it or a period of something different, that part is a little bit scary and then the part that goes hand in hand with that is this is what I love. I love the game. I love being on a field every day. I love being at a training ground every day. I love every part of that … It was a non-decision in a lot of ways where I knew that at a certain point, I was going to finish my playing career but I wanted to move into coaching as quickly as possible."

Barely two years after hanging up his boots, Bradley is unsurprisingly clear-minded about how he wants his team to look and with the mix of Red Bull buzzwords in his vocabulary, it comes as no surprise that he landed at the New Jersey club.

"We are going to be a team that's dynamic, aggressive," he said. "We're going to have a team that steps on the field every single week and tries to go after the opponent, tries to put them in a game that they're not used to. We're going to try to combine the part of being aggressive and pressing with ideas with the ball, ways to put the game on our terms, connect passes, different ways to get into the box, ways to create chances and score goals and so we're going to be a team that tries to go for it every single weekend, a team that anybody who comes into the stadium to watch, they're excited by and a team that when our fans look on the field, they're proud of and they connect with."

Bradley said he prefers not to break the game down into 100 different pieces, leaning instead on the sport's fluidity as a foundational aspect of his philosophy.

"The game is dynamic and fluid and you're attacking one minute and then you lose the ball and you go from attack to defense and then you win right back and all of a sudden you're attacking again and the game is gray," he said. "There's not always a perfect way to describe every situation. No two actions are the exact same … [I believe in a style] where you encourage the players every day to think faster, to see more, to execute better, to take in all of the information from the game and use it to make the best possible decisions and to develop a team that is able to co-adapt to all of the different situations that a game throws at them and so for me, that's the beauty of coaching."

Bradley's vision of the game is naturally rooted in his tendencies and preferences as a deep-lying midfielder.

"As a player, I hated waiting," he said. "I hated having to feel like we were going to go on the field and react to what the other team was doing or hope that they, on the day, weren't as good and we could then take advantage. As a player, I wanted to go on the field and do everything I could to put the game on my terms. I wanted to have the ball as much as possible. I wanted to win the ball back as quickly as possible. I wanted to play on a team that was doing everything we could in every moment to try to be aggressive, to try to win. Can you win every single weekend? No, you can't but it was more fun and more rewarding and more fulfilling for me to try to do that as opposed to just hope and wait."

It comes as little surprise, then, that his list of coaching inspirations is a mix of local contacts and a handful of internationally renowned coaches who prefer a similar style. The list includes his father Bob and Manfred Schellscheidt, a coach with experience in the North American Soccer League and college soccer in New Jersey, as well as Jurgen Klopp, Hansi Flick and Luis Enrique. Bradley now counts Klopp, who is at the top of Red Bull's soccer organization chart, as a professional contact, an experience he described as "surreal."

"When you watched his teams play, when you watched interviews or press conferences or listened to the things that he said and then you have the chance to sit across the table with him or ask him questions," he said, "His aura, his personality, his way of connecting with people, his way of talking about the game, that part is so unique and as a young coach, to be able to have somebody who has lived the game at the highest levels, who's had the success he's had, that part is so valuable."

'Hungry for an opportunity like this'

Bradley's rise up the Red Bulls' ranks may have been quick but the company's soccer operation took several months to vet him before there was an opening last June to take charge of the Next Pro team. It began with a conversation with Mario Gomez, the retired Germany international turned Red Bull Soccer technical director, in November 2024 and accelerated after Klopp began his role as the company's head of global soccer in January of 2025. De Guzman and Jochen Scheider, De Guzman's predecessor, then held talks with Bradley before he met again with Gomez, who was alongside Klopp and his assistants Zsolt Low and Peter Krawietz in the ex-Liverpool manager's first visit to the New Jersey-based club last winter. Bradley then ventured to Europe for a month last spring, spending time with Red Bull Salzburg reserve team FC Liefering and at Red Bull's global office in Munich.

Through months of meetings, Bradley's ambition – and his preparedness – were easy to spot.

"We could've talked to him about coaching the U-17 team at the get-go and he would've done it," de Guzman said. "Michael comes, you and you see what he's able to do. He's young, he's hungry, he's fresh, he's ready to go so those are the simple things that get you started to say, yeah, this is the right person and then when you meet him, when you see him work on a day-to-day basis."

De Guzman, who is also entering his first season as the Red Bulls' head of sport, believes Bradley is the type of figure to turn things around for the team after a drab 2025 season that ended in a 10th-place finish in the Eastern Conference. The retired Canada international insisted that the team needs a breath of fresh air, both in terms of coaching and players as they begin to reassemble the squad after several high-profile departures, and that Bradley is the right person to set a new tone.

"There's days where I show up, 7:45 in the morning to the office, but he's already there and you think, maybe this is just a one-off but it's every day, he's there," de Guzman said about Bradley. "First one there in the room, preparing the sessions, just going through his video, going through the notes and you watch that, you say, okay, this is a real dude. This is a real individual that's serious about his work and then I will leave the office around 7:00 at night and he's the one doing box-to-box runs. I thought it was one of our players but you realize this guy is here to win and this is not just a one-off."

In Bradley, de Guzman believes he has found a genuine talent, so much so that he invoked the name of Jesse Marsch, who used his stint at the Red Bulls from 2015 to 2018 as a launching pad for a years-long stint at different clubs in Europe. His first task, though, will be partnering with de Guzman to build a team that bring the Red Bulls out of the mediocrity they have settled for since Marsch's departure – and de Guzman is betting on Bradley to foster an environment that enables that change.

"Everyone feeds off of that – from players to staff and that creates the culture and this is the person you want every day in your building and it makes you enjoy and love your job," he said. "The type of person he is, [that] is what we need in this organization as a leader, to develop not just these young kids that aspire to be pro one day just like he was but also everyone around him. He creates an incredible environment, brings top energy and he's a super professional and that's something that reflects what Red Bull is all about."