Bradley was set up to fail at Swansea
England inhospitable to American coach
Bob Bradley didn’t want to be known as the first American coach to lead an English Premier League soccer team, but as the ax fell on his time in charge of Swansea City on Tuesday, his ultimate demise came with a star-spangled theme.
There were many things Bradley couldn’t do after taking over at Swansea in October. He couldn’t extract greater effort from the aging and underwhelming group of players he inherited. He couldn’t arrest the malaise and gloom that has long surrounded the club. He couldn’t come up with a tactical plan to stop his team from getting consistently smashed on the road.
And, ultimately, he couldn’t make everyone forget he was American.
Soccer is the most global of sports, yet there are generalizations and prejudices permeating the game, perhaps nowhere more so than in the English system, where the game was invented and whose followers still believe they hold the blueprint to how things should be done.
American players are no longer blighted by assumptions based on nationality, but this country’s coaches are. Bradley, who led the U.S. national team to the Round of 16 in the 2010 World Cup, was a victim of circumstance as much as anything.
He wasn’t going to get a job at a stable team near the top of the Premier League, because Americans don’t even get considered for those jobs, let alone have the chance to accept them.
Having traveled far and wide in the hunt for knowledge and experience, Bradley remained a deeply ambitious man who wished to improve himself. So he was left with no choice but say yes to Swansea, taking a bad job with a bad team and setting himself up for what was a bad outcome.
Swansea’s players had seen the squad fall into disarray under disorganized former manager Francesco Guidolin and had little willingness to fight and scrap for survival for a fresh coach they didn’t know.
They managed two wins in 11 games during Bradley’s time in charge, conceded 18 goals and lost five of six on the road, capped by a 4-1 defeat at home to West Ham United on Monday.
A day later, Bradley was summoned to meet the owners and was gone, his dream of coaching at the highest club level in Europe perhaps extinguished with it. If he wants them, he will have opportunities aplenty back in the USA, especially with the swath of new Major League Soccer teams coming into the league.
As for Europe’s most esteemed league, though, it is a closed door. For Bradley, and likely for any other enterprising American coach with lofty aspirations in the near future.