B.J. Callaghan’s rise to leading the U.S. men’s soccer team has roots at Villanova

Few people know about Callaghan’s rise better than Wildcats coach Tom Carlin, and he has a lot of stories to tell.

Ventnor native B.J. Callaghan played at Ursinus, then coached at Saint Joseph's, Villanova and the Union before joining the U.S. men's national team's staff in 2019. Now he's the interim manager.Read moreJae C. Hong / AP

Published June 15, 2023, 7:15 p.m. ET

Back in 2007, when Tom Carlin arrived at Villanova as an assistant men’s soccer coach, he got to know a young assistant on the women’s team’s staff with an expertise in coaching goalkeepers.

The next season, when Carlin succeeded Larry Sullivan as the Wildcats’ head men’s soccer coach, that young assistant wanted to move to the men’s team, and Carlin brought him on board.

There was no sign then that a decade and a half later, B.J. Callaghan would have, even temporarily, the top coaching post in American men’s soccer. But what’s certain is that few people know about Callaghan’s rise better than Carlin, now 46 and the winningest coach in Villanova men’s soccer history.

Put aside, for now, the fact that Callaghan only has the job on an interim basis — the ongoing Concacaf Nations League final four, then the Gold Cup right afterward. He won’t have the job for good, and he knows it.

Still, as stories to tell go, this sure is one. The 41-year-old Ventnor, N.J., native is the first U.S. manager with roots in the Philly area since Hall of Famer Walt Chyzowych from 1976-80.

Lending an ear

Callaghan was at Villanova from 2005-12, rising to associate head coach in 2008.

“We hit it off right away,” Carlin said. “Not only was he great with the goalkeepers for us, but he administratively had all of our systems working — whether it was heart rate monitors, whether it was some of the player readiness data, or databases that we were using for camps or compliance. … B.J. was the glue that kept everything else in order.”

When Callaghan joined the U.S. staff in 2019, he became a glue guy there, too. From film rooms to scouts’ suites at stadiums, Callaghan has watched games from all kinds of angles.

“B.J. was in Berhalter’s ear,” Carlin said of past and now-returned U.S. manager Gregg Berhalter, and he meant it literally. Berhalter’s earpiece on the bench had Callaghan on the line.

“He was talking to B.J. about tactics, talking to B.J. about different player personnel,” Carlin said. “A lot of what went into all of the game tape, and all of the scouting and preparation and player management, ran through B.J.”

The intangibles, what Carlin called “the secret sauce,” have mattered a lot too.

“He just has that natural ability to make you feel like he’s all in to your conversation, your relationship, your program, whatever it may be,” Carlin said. “How in touch he was with all the information systems of that national team really just made him the natural fit.”

From Wrigley Field to the Main Line

Before Carlin coached at Villanova, he was at Arcadia from 2000-05, then spent a year as Northwestern’s associate men’s head coach. That put him in a vast web of connections centered around the Wildcats’ coach at the time, South Jersey-born Tim Lenahan.

“He is the guy that connected me with Jimmy,” Carlin said. Lenahan also introduced Carlin to one of Curtin’s close friends: Jesse Marsch, then a Chicago Fire teammate and long among the top candidates to become the full-time U.S. manager.

On Sundays, Carlin, Lenahan and Curtin frequented a bar near Wrigley Field that showed Eagles games. In 2009, Curtin hung up his cleats and headed back to Philadelphia. He started to pick up local coaching gigs, including with a Union-run youth team. Then Carlin called with an offer.

“I couldn’t get rid of B.J., he was my only full time guy, to bring in Jimmy — which I would have if B.J. wasn’t there,” Carlin said. “So I just said, ‘Hey, do you want to come be a volunteer?’”

Curtin said yes.

“He was great,” Carlin said. “He spoke to our guys about Villanova, what it meant to be a part of the program, came out and helped out in a lot of different ways.”

The blue and gold route

Curtin spent a year on Carlin’s staff, then got deeper in the Union’s youth setup. In 2012, then-Union manager John Hackworth promoted him to the MLS team’s bench. The following spring, the Union hired Callaghan full-time. When Hackworth was fired in 2014, Curtin made Callaghan one of his top assistants.

Callaghan spent the next five years on Curtin’s staff, then joined U.S. Soccer in early 2019 as one of Berhalter’s assistants. He left town before the Union reached the heights they’re now at, but Callaghan had a huge role in planting those roots: Andre Blake, Matt Freese, Brenden and Paxten Aaronson, Mark McKenzie, and more.

Plus Curtin, a manager now so firmly in Major League Soccer’s elite that he’s joined Marsch on lists of national team candidates.

“For him to stand out in front of it and be able to steer the ship in the right direction, and to do it all the while by being such an awesome person — he’s just a really, really great person, very down to earth, very unassuming, for everything that he’s accomplished,” Carlin said of Curtin. “For me to say that I got the opportunity to spend some time with him, and he was on my staff … makes us feel impactful, you know, and makes us feel relevant in his history as a coach.”

As those roots blossomed, they revealed more ties to Carlin’s circle. When Curtin coached the Union in their first Concacaf Champions League campaign, he shook hands with Lenahan’s most famous protégé: Santiago Solari, then the manager of Mexican superpower Club América. Long before Solari won the Champions League playing for Real Madrid, he was a college soccer prospect at Stockton — just up the Atlantic City Expressway from Callaghan’s hometown.

And when Jay Wright announced Curtin had won his second MLS Coach of the Year award, he became the second Villanova basketball coach with Union ties. Jack Kraft, another Wildcats sideline legend, was Callaghan’s grandfather.

“A bunch of alums and friends, fellow coaches, we made a vow we’re going to get out to one of his games to watch it live,” Carlin said of Callaghan. It will be the July 2 Gold Cup group stage finale vs. Trinidad & Tobago in Charlotte.

“It’s just going to make me proud,” Carlin said. “Make me proud of him, and feel like in some way, shape, or form, that Villanova soccer was a part of his pathway. And it hopefully helped him develop some of the character attributes that it took to get that spot.”