Bradley Carnell has a world of soccer experience, but with the Union, he’s focused on now

New Union manager Bradley Carnell has seen plenty over his career in professional soccer: He’s coaching in MLS, played in Germany, and has done both in his native South Africa. He knows what it takes to rise to the sport’s pinnacle, having played for his country at the 2002 World Cup.

All of that should serve Carnell well as he settles into this job. They could even serve as fuel for motivational speeches in the locker room. But that’s not how he approaches being a manager.

“I don’t care about where I’ve been and what I’ve done,” Carnell told The Inquirer. “I’ve never been a show-and-tell guy. I’ve never said once with my team, ‘Oh, when I played in the World Cup …’”

This is not because of how few Union players were alive when the 48-year-old stood on soccer’s biggest stage. If you tell a player you competed in a World Cup, they’ll listen, no matter their age — even someone as young as 15-year-old Cavan Sullivan.

No, it’s just how Carnell is as a person.

“For me, to coach players to get to those moments, that makes it rewarding,” he said. “It’s got nothing to do with me. I have aspirations as a coach, but they are far less than, for me, getting development out of this roster and letting those guys achieve their dreams — or represent their country or go play abroad, if their dreams so desire.”

» READ MORE: Cavan Sullivan is the Union’s biggest story this year, whether that’s fair or not

If you’re the type who judges coaches based on how they talk (not that this alone leads to wins and losses), you won’t find Charlie Manuel’s folksiness, Nick Sirianni’s metaphors, or Buddy Ryan’s bombast. Carnell is calm, down-to-earth, direct, and confident, but he isn’t a shouter at a podium.

That confidence is why he debuted as a professional player at age 16, moved to Germany at 21, and spent a dozen years there. Along the way, he earned 40 national team caps. And though Carnell wasn’t as famous as some teammates — Quinton Fortune played for Manchester United, Lucas Radebe for Leeds, and Benni McCarthy in Spain and Portugal — he played every minute available at that World Cup as a defender.

It’s a great story to tell a Union squad full of prospects who hope to someday match what the United States did in 2002, when it reached the quarterfinals for the only time since 1930.

Indeed, Sullivan and his colleagues dream of more.

Still, that’s not how Carnell wants to project himself.

“I’m ambitious, don’t get me wrong — I’m a winner. I’m a competitor,” he said. “But, you know, I can’t tell the players what I did and how I used to do it because that means nothing in modern soccer. That bears no value for me.”

It would also be sensible if Carnell felt he had something to prove to his former employers.

In late 2020, he became the New York Red Bulls’ interim manager for 14 games after four years as an assistant. Chris Armas was fired in early September, the season was on the rocks, and in October Carnell’s bosses picked Gerhard Struber to take the helm, but he couldn’t travel because of pandemic-related visa delays.

» READ MORE: Lionel Messi brings Union teen phenom Cavan Sullivan into his orbit, or at least Adidas does

With that on top of everything else the pandemic did to sports, Carnell led the team to a 6-5-3 record and a playoff spot. However, he didn’t get to coach the playoff game because Struber’s visa got cleared in time. When he arrived, he promptly lost in the one-game first round.

Carnell went back to being an assistant for the 2021 season, then was hired by St. Louis City SC in 2022 to prepare for its expansion season in 2023. The club shot out of the gates, winning the Western Conference regular-season title. Then the dream turned into a nightmare, as St. Louis was ousted by No. 8 seed (and new cross-state rival) Sporting Kansas City.

St. Louis started 2024 with just two losses in 13 games. But seven of those games were ties, and they turned to losses starting in mid-May. Amid a nine-game winless skid and rumors of a fractured locker room, Carnell was fired at the end of June.

Various sources in New York and St. Louis painted a similar big picture: Carnell can coach, he’s a nice guy, and maybe Philadelphia will be where it goes right for him — especially with a young Union team that likely won’t be a contender.

So does Carnell feel he has a chip on his shoulder?

“There’s always avenues, and channels, and excuses, and if, coulda, woulda, shoulda,” he said. “I’m not that type of person. I’m a guy who doesn’t dwell in the past, and I really don’t talk much about what was. I always like to know what is about now, in the current moment, and to try and put that [in], and building places to take us steps forward.”

» READ MORE: Ernst Tanner knows Union fans are frustrated, and promises improvement this year

That doesn’t mean he’s forgotten, though.

“I look at these as building blocks,” he said, “shaping me and forging me into a manager.”

When Union sporting director Ernst Tanner called Carnell to inquire about his availability, it was far from the first time they’d talked. Tanner was part of Red Bull’s global soccer organization when Carnell arrived in New York in early 2017 from South Africa’s Orlando Pirates. They struck up conversations and kept them going over the years.

“He knows about me, I know about Ernst, and I know where he comes from,” Carnell said. “When Ernst called and said if we could explore this possibility, then we got to work.”

Soon enough, Carnell was invited to meet with the men atop the Union’s ownership group: Jay Sugarman, Richard Leibovitch, and academy bankroller Richie Graham. They sealed the deal, making Carnell the fourth manager in the Union’s 16-year history.

“Chatting with these guys, how I worked fitted hand in hand with how upper management and ownership would like to take this mission and this project forward,” he said. “I feel I’m pretty well-versed in the expectations of developing the club as a whole, not just this first team. Which made it really exciting, to have a signature to go back to, what the club feels that they need to value.”

» READ MORE: After Jack McGlynn’s star turn with the U.S. national team, where does he fit with the Union?

How does Carnell want to do this job? He knows that while this roster is young, he has joined a team whose way of doing things was set before his arrival.

“The club has their game model, I have my game model, the players have their tendencies, plus some synchronization built in from seasons prior,” he said. “And now, how can we merge into one big success? So, how much do I give a little bit? How much do I take a little bit? How much does a club demand a little bit? And how much are the players willing to give?”

Carnell has a history of giving young players chances: Tyler Adams and Caden Clark in New York, Miguel Perez and Caden Glover in St. Louis. He knows that’s the biggest reason why he was brought here, with Sullivan, CJ Olney, Neil Pierre, and others on the cusp of breakthroughs.

But he will listen to the club’s veterans, especially Alejandro Bedoya. The Union’s longtime captain knows his playing days are nearing their end, but Carnell was pleased when Bedoya approached him to offer whatever he can.

“We had open conversations, and he was like, ‘Coach, I’m here for anything you need, for me to drive messages — I’m part of you,’” Carnell said. “To have that assurance, and to have that drive from a guy like Ale, a legend at the club … these are the messages I want to hear from the older senior players: that they’re ready to take on the challenge, and almost reinvent themselves, and to have this growth mindset and to be open to new messages and to even then develop themselves further.”

» READ MORE: Ventnor City native B.J. Callaghan is ready for his first full year as a MLS manager

It would be a challenge for anyone to inherit Jim Curtin’s seat. His combination of coaching acumen, local roots, and personal charm are just about impossible to match — and his longevity probably will be, too. The odds are slim that anyone will ever coach 405 games over 11 seasons with the Union again, because that’s how the world works.

Curtin also became soccer’s unofficial ambassador around town, from his kids’ youth games to sports talk radio (on the rare occasions when it mentions soccer) to international visitors. If someone wanted to talk with him about the Eagles for five minutes and then soccer for 30 seconds, he’d oblige. If someone wanted his opinion on a big European club or the U.S. women’s team coming to town, he’d have something to say and want to say it.

That stuff didn’t come with Carnell’s job description, and it didn’t have to. There’s nothing out of the ordinary about a sports team hiring a coach simply to coach.

But while he isn’t from the area or a Villanova alumnus, he wants to put some roots down here. He, his wife, Claudia, and daughters Caitlyn (age 20, and at the University of Kansas) and Kiera (age 16) recently got green cards.

“We’ve committed as a family to America,” Carnell said, “and really shown commitment to be here for the long haul.”

» READ MORE: Gregg Berhalter draws cheers from his fellow coaches as he begins his tenure with the Chicago Fire

In North Jersey, he made connections that he still has today. In St. Louis, he embraced the soccer history of a city — one with more than any other in America. He knows six of its sons played on the legendary 1950 U.S. World Cup team (with Philadelphia legends Walter Bahr and Ed McIlvenney), and some of their families still live there.

Now Carnell will have the most prominent soccer job in America’s birthplace when the Club World Cup comes to town this summer and likely when the biggest World Cup of all arrives next year.

His first job is to win games, and his second is to develop the Union’s young corps so it can reach its great potential. That’s what he’ll be known for more than anything else — and he doesn’t have much time to prepare for a season that starts next month.

But in a city where soccer constantly fights for scraps of attention, the other stuff might help. Especially knowing how beloved Curtin was, and still is, by many fans.

“I might be a foreign coach, or I might be foreign to the town,” he said, “but that doesn’t change my mindset of serving and representing these fans, [the] community, people, with the utmost respect and the attention this whole product and this whole city deserve. It’s just part of who I am. … I don’t need to be ‘local’ to be local.”