Soccer <\/p>\n
Perhaps Julian de Guzman was always destined to pick Michael Bradley<\/a> as his first coaching hire as Red Bull New York<\/a>\u2019s head of sport.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n He\u2019d faced off against the longtime MLS and US men\u2019s national team<\/a> star in midfield battles during their playing days, and watched how Bradley anchored the transformation of his hometown club Toronto FC<\/a> from league punchline to perennial trophy hunters.<\/p>\n The firsthand observations he gleaned from Bradley\u2019s half-year in charge of RBNY\u2019s second team, which the New Jersey native led to last year\u2019s MLS NEXT Pro championship<\/a> in November, may have been the most powerful data points.<\/p>\n Again and again, de Guzman explained at Bradley\u2019s introductory press conference on Monday afternoon, he noticed his colleague was one of the first ones into the office in the mornings, and the last to leave at night \u2013 not just crunching video or drawing up practice notes, but even fitting in workouts of his own on the training pitch.<\/p>\n \u201cYou watch that, you say, ‘OK, this is a real dude. This is a real individual that’s serious about his work,’\u201d recalled de Guzman. \u201cI\u2019d leave the office around 7 o’clock at night, and then he’s the one doing box-to-box runs. At first, 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.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone feeds off of that, from players, from staff, and that creates the culture. And this is the person you want every day in your building.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n This is the first top-flight head coaching gig for Bradley, who turned 38 last July. But that phrase underrates the extent to which his whole life has been leading up to this moment.<\/p>\n As the wunderkind son of MLS and USMNT coaching legend Bob Bradley \u2013 at age 16, Michael was RBNY\u2019s youngest-ever signing in 2004, way back when they were known as the MetroStars \u2013 and a field general for most of his 20 years as a do-everything center mid in some of Europe\u2019s biggest leagues before joining TFC, he\u2019s long been burnishing the leadership traits that powered him to a post of this magnitude faster than even he expected.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not only de Guzman who sees something special in the younger Bradley, but also the likes of J\u00fcrgen Klopp and Mario G\u00f3mez, the German icons steering Red Bull\u2019s global network.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I came to the club six months ago, it was in the back of my mind for sure. It was something that I hoped to, with time, earn, work for,\u201d Bradley explained.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn’t think it was something that was going to come necessarily this quickly. But when the season ended, when Julian and I were able to speak, when I was able to have discussions with J\u00fcrgen and Mario, and just understand even more what this club wants to be going forward, how in the world could you say no?<\/p>\n \u201cCertain things come, and you’ve got to go for it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Let\u2019s run it, Coach. \ud83e\udee1 pic.twitter.com\/GnCynTyqWG<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 New York Red Bulls (@NewYorkRedBulls) January 6, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n Over nearly an hour\u2019s worth of questions from area reporters, the young duo overhauling both RBNY\u2019s roster and tactical philosophy also dropped a few hints as to how they plan to reinvent a team that fell well short of expectations in 2025, letting a North American pro sports-record streak of 15 straight Audi MLS Cup Playoffs berths die in the wake of a sterling run to the 2024 MLS Cup final.<\/p>\n \u201cWe’re going to have a team that’s younger, for sure,\u201d said Bradley. \u201cWe, especially in certain spots, feel like we’ve needed to be faster, more dynamic, in some cases, more athletic. But then how do we combine that with players that also have football qualities, that can, with their skill, with their quality, with their intelligence, understand how to play, how to move, how to find spaces?\u201d<\/p>\n As those words, and RBNY\u2019s early litany of winter ins and outs, would suggest, the club\u2019s conception of \u2018energy drink soccer\u2019 is evolving.<\/p>\n \u201cThe foundations of Red Bull football that have always been there in terms of pressing and intensity and making a game that’s fast, trying to put the game on our terms in every moment,\u201d Bradley noted. \u201cWe’re also going to try to combine that with really good ideas when we have the ball.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the better and more aggressively you press, the more you have the ball, and the better that you can be with the ball, the more passes you can connect, the more ideas, the more ways you have to create chances, the better you’ll counterpress, and the more aggressive you can be against the ball.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Passion meets purpose. pic.twitter.com\/EvJ39UnxJm<\/a><\/p>\nBuilt for the job<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
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Red Bull revamp<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
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