Bradley the right choice all along

Sunil Gulati had some grand plans when he bid farewell to Bruce Arena as U.S. national team head coach more than 10 months ago. The new U.S. Soccer president had a prime position to fill and a large war chest to land a coach that would not only grab headlines but also help the U.S. team go further than even Arena, the most successful coach in U.S. history, had.

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Impressive wins over Mexico and Ecuador probably helped Bob Bradley land the job.

Gulati filled out a wish list of names, most of which were foreign, and somewhere on that list he made room for Bob Bradley, a man Gulati has known for decades, a coach whose steely glare and reputation as a disciplinarian made it easy for some to ignore the fact that behind that hardened exterior was a true teacher of the game.

That is why Gulati kept Bradley in mind even as his first choice, Juergen Klinsmann, walked away from the negotiating table in December. It is also why, after having months to consider more high-profile options, Gulati has chosen Bradley to be the first permanent coaching hire of his presidency.

The decision to promote Bradley from interim coach to head coach wasn't nearly as surprising as Gulati's initial decision to hand the reins over to Bradley back in December. A solid 3-0-1 showing in four matches in charge, highlighted by a dramatic 2-0 victory against archrival and full-strength Mexico, helped sway public support in favor of the best American candidate for the job.

Did those results, or the impressive way Bradley handled the unenviable position of interim coach, sway Gulati into reconsidering his desire for a more high-profile coach?

"I don't think I was going to learn very much about Bob in the last couple of months," Gulati said in an interview six weeks ago. "We've known each other a very long time, both personally and professionally, and I have an extraordinarily high regard for him on both those fronts. So from that perspective, it would be hard to say that I've learned anything new about Bob."

So what did the past five months do if not convince Gulati that hiring Bradley was the right move? It certainly helped make Gulati's final decision an easier one for fans and critics to stomach.

"He's accomplished a lot in a very short period of time and established a very good rapport with the players on the team," Gulati said. "I'm not sure if he's changed a lot of minds of fans out there, but results always do that and he's had some very good results, so that's a plus."

A conspiracy theorist might argue that it was Gulati's intention all along to hire Bradley, but that doing so in December, when the wide-spread belief was that Klinsmann was going to be hired, would have led to an unfair backlash against Bradley.

The interim tag didn't do much to protect Bradley at first. He was labeled an Arena clone and Gulati was criticized for replacing an old coach with a new coach who wasn't much better or even different. Bradley didn't bother much with that criticism. He instead focused on the process of building a team and establishing a new atmosphere around the national team. He embraced the team and pushed it hard at the same time, knowing full well that he had five months of national team rustiness to shake off.

Despite the interim tag, Bradley didn't coach like a man who was in desperate need of results. He coached like someone who was trying to build a foundation for a successful World Cup cycle. Bradley and assistant coach Peter Nowak wasted no time setting a more disciplined tone for the national team pool and challenging players, some of whom desperately needed a challenge.

The U.S. team responded with very impressive victories against Denmark, Mexico and Ecuador and while Bradley's last match, a scoreless draw against Guatemala, spoiled his perfect record, the small body of work and the way U.S. players responded to his leadership provided more than enough evidence that he was capable of delivering results.

But can he do the job when the games really start to matter? Skeptics continue to question whether Bradley, or any American coach for that matter, has the tactical knowledge and soccer savvy to take the U.S. national team to an elite level on a consistent basis with the likes of Brazil, Italy and Argentina. There continues to be a refusal to believe that any American coach really has the soccer brain to match wits with coaches from nations such as the aforementioned powerhouses (apparently it doesn't matter that the United States is years away from boasting the sheer amount of talent that the world's soccer powers can produce).

That lack of belief in an American coach would fade if you spent any amount of time talking soccer with Bradley or watching him devour hours of video footage or seeing him work with players to make them understand the most intricate details of playing the game. He has spent, and continues to spend, untold hours studying the game at its highest levels. All that work has enabled Bradley to decipher, interpret and teach the game on a level very few Americans before him ever could.

If Bradley ever needed anybody to defend his abilities to excel as a coach on the international level he only would have to turn to Hristo Stoitchkov and Youri Djorkaeff, two of the most decorated players to ever pass through MLS. Both were international stars who played the game at its highest levels and both grew to admire Bradley for his passion and his understanding of the game.

These were traits that Gulati was well aware of before that December day when he first approached Bradley about accepting what is truly his dream job, traits Gulati considered strongly when he finally decided that it was time to throw out the interim label.

We won't have to wait very long to find out just how prepared Bradley really is. The U.S. team is less than a month away from the CONCACAF Gold Cup and more than a month away from competing in the highly-competitive Copa America. Gulati's decision will be judged far more quickly than it was made and Bradley will do his best to prove to the American soccer public that his name was the only one Gulati ever needed to write on that list almost a year ago.

Ives Galarcep covers MLS for ESPNsoccernet. He is a writer and columnist for the Herald News (N.J.) and writes a blog, Soccer By Ives. He can be reached at Ivespn79@aol.com.