'A better coach than I was a player' - USMNT legend Michael Bradley wants to revamp the New York Red Bulls in first head coaching gig

But first, a pause.

This should be, perhaps, one of the most desirable jobs in Major League Soccer. The Red Bulls have money, a top stadium, a fine facility, and, perhaps a little unspokenly so, the promise of upward mobility. Until last year, the Red Bulls were a perennial playoff team, and legends such as Thierry Henry, Tim Cahill and Bradley Wright-Philips graced their pitch. 

Yet there was a sense that Red Bull soccer had become a little bit stale. All five clubs in their system were built on the principles of high pressing, all-action soccer, usually in a 4-2-2-2 formation. The issue? In modern football, teams learn to adjust to that kind of thing. Previous head coach Sandro Schwarz's tactics were too predictable. New York played like pretty much any other Red Bull team. They missed the playoffs for the first time in 15 years. Something had to change. 

In truth, the wheels had been in motion on that front for some time. It starts at the top. Red Bull hired Jurgen Klopp as Head of Global Soccer in 2025. And he had some fresh ideas. Sure, Red Bulls should be full of intensity and verve. But they also needed to know how to play football. Among the coaches he earmarked to lead that new era? Bradley, who was yet to hold a head coaching job.

"I met with them, and it was clear after five minutes, the direction that Jurgen wants to take Red Bull. And I'm here because that is 100 percent in line with how I see and feel the game," Bradley said. 

That kind of speak - one of game models and tactical principles - is not uncommon among head coaches. Every manager wants to play a certain way, or employ a certain system. But at Red Bull, principles aren't tentpoles as much as they are mandates. Red Bull clubs simply have to be aggressive.

Bradley knows, then, that he has to play the kind of football Red Bull likes - while also bringing his own ideas.

"It was about being able to hold a group to the highest standards in terms of how we play against the ball, how we press, the intensity that we play with, how hard we run, how much we sprint, how hard we counter-press," Bradley explained. "But then also hold the highest standards when we have the ball, to say, how good can our football be? How can we find the right rhythm? How can we find the right ways to connect passes, to play forward, to score goals?"

It's an interesting time to be a young coach. Pep Guardiola, once at the forefront of everything, admitted last year that he is no longer the model of modern football. He was the central figure for a generation of coaches coming through. And if Klopp, his arch nemesis and most obvious rival, is technically now Bradley's boss, where does that leave the American? Who is setting the blueprint? 

"The game is only getting faster, it's only getting more dynamic. It's only getting more fluid," he said. "Ideas come back around, and ideas get adjusted and tweaked. There's a part to the game that will always be like that. But I think again, when you just look at athletes nowadays, and when you look at football players, when you look at the speed of the game - it's not slowing down."

That is, in a sense, modern MLS. Teams tend to score a lot and concede a lot. The game is quicker, decision-making is faster, and players are fitter. There was an assumption, for a while, that the league could be a bit of a summer stroll - especially for European talent. That is simply no longer true. It also makes Bradley's job as a young coach much harder. 

"We need to make sure that when the game is flying around, we have players who can co-adapt to all of the competitive uncertainty that the game presents. Every situation is different. No two actions are the exact same. And so how do you get players in a team to embrace that?" Bradley said. 

Training, he argued, is key. But his response has also been to, in what might seem a counterintuitive way, slow the game down a little bit. That means the Red Bulls have to play football. When chaos is unfolding, they have to know when to keep their heads. Decision making at high speed, he argued, is the key to this all.

There is a sense, of course, that Bradley has always been working towards this. The center midfielder-turned manager pipeline is a bit of a trope. But it exists for a reason. And Bradley is a perfect example. A box-to-box midfielder who learned to play in a deeper role as he aged, the American is the exact kind of player that seems primed to be a coach. 

In fact, Bradley always thought like one.

"There was always a part of me that was thinking about the game from the perspective bigger than just 'what's good for me?'" Bradley said. 

Still, he could have done anything. Former players can be scouts, general managers, go into punditry, or walk away from the game altogether. For Bradley, though, it really wasn't a choice. He was addicted to being in locker rooms.

"I love being a part of the team, being a part of a group of people that are trying to do something together," he said. "I love the routine and the rhythm of being at a training ground every day and being on the field."

But his position also informed how he saw soccer. Playing in the middle of the park, relying heavily on the 10 guys around him - perhaps moreso than other players in other positions - forced a kind of tactical understanding. 

"It was how are we playing? How is the other team playing? What gives us an edge on the day?" Bradley said.

There is also the occasionally unspoken reality that Bradley is following in his father's footsteps.

"I grew up in the house of a coach. I was around the game. I was around coaches. I was around coaching from the day that I could think or talk or even understand what was going on," Bradley said.

The good news for him in his first job? The Red Bulls have supported his effort. As part of an organizational shuffle, Julian De Guzman was transferred to Head of Sport, charged, mostly, with overseeing transfer business for the club. One of his first moves was to officially promote Bradley to the first team. There were a number of things that appealed. But mostly, De Guzman agreed that the Red Bulls had to change.

"You have to be intense, you have to be aggressive, you have to be a runner, and have all this energy. But when it's time to have the ball, let's play football. Let's try to do something fun," De Guzman told GOAL. 

He understood it because of his background. De Guzman played for eight clubs across five countries. But he was most shaped by his years in Spain. 

"The belief that I feel from my playing background, from Michael's playing background, and where I had the most joy of football in my past life as a player was in La Liga, and La Liga is football," De Guzman said. 

Buying into Bradley's football, then, came as second nature. 

But building a squad that fit that philosophy wasn't easy. That meant it was a busy winter in New Jersey. The Red Bulls got aggressive in the transfer market, but they also got young. Cade Cowell was signed from Chivas Guadalajara on loan. Jorge Ruvalcaba was brought in from Pumas to fill a DP slot. An influx of South American talent has been ushered towards the first team. 

Red Bulls have a youthful excitement about them this season. And that was always the plan. 

Of course, it may come with some bumps in the road. Playing the kind of football that Bradley envisions is, frankly, quite hard on an MLS budget. World-class athletes with the pausa required to slow the game down in the final third don't exactly grow on trees.

"They're very difficult to find. They're very expensive, too. But we're not about going out there, spending crazy amounts of money to find these types of players," De Guzman said.

Still, they feel they have made strides. And with veterans Emil Forsberg and Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting adding a little more nous in attacking areas, there is a nice blend of old and young forming here. 

And so we return to Bradley, the man at the center of it all. This was always going to be a big job, and it could yet be a huge one. A central goal of De Guzman's New York Red Bulls is a return to some of the organizational principles of old. This place used to be a pipeline that exported talent and shuffled people through its rooms. That tradition has somewhat remained alive, but he wants to grease the wheels a little more. It's part of why Bradley got the job in the first place.

"Sure, you'll have a list of candidates, but then that last question you ask yourself is, 'Who within the environment actually deserves this?' And then that becomes a bigger conversation. And then when you see that person ticks up all the boxes based on their development, the progress, then we identify that person internally," De Guzman said. 

Tyler Adams was the last major American player to graduate through the system. Jesse Marsch was the last coach to make it through. Bradley might be the next. And the steps are already there. The previous MLS Next Pro coach, Ibrahim Sekagya, became an assistant to Schwarz and is now on the current coaching staff. Bradley was, of course, promoted from witgub. Sure, there's more to this job than knowing how it works inside the building. But Red Bulls are perhaps looking at the next big manager to get shuttled on through the system.

Bradley buys into that idea, too - even if he wouldn't commit to putting a target on things.

"I want to coach at the absolute highest level that I can. I'm proud of the career that I had as a player; I enjoyed every second. But I want to do everything I can to have an even better coaching career, to be a better coach than I was a player," Bradley said.

For now, of course, there's football to play, a season to worry about, and playoffs to return to. But where there was once pessimism, there is now youthful verve. And that, for now, may be enough.