New York Red Bulls Preview: Step Up Coach Michael Bradley

It’s all change at New York Red Bulls for 2026.

The most obvious of these is the highly anticipated first-team coaching debut of former MetroStar and United States captain Michael Bradley. Beneath the surface, though, is a Red Bull identity… let’s not call it a crisis, maybe a rethink, as energy drink intensity looks to combine with a greater focus on possession and build-up play as part of the Jürgen Klopp-led global sporting project.

Bradley will be very much part of that in a multiclub ownership group that looks to develop coaches as well as players. Producing a top-rated American coach would be good for the brand, for Major League Soccer, and for Red Bull. Above all, though, it would be good for the New Jersey franchise whose 15-year run of qualifying for the MLS post-season came to an end last season.

Bradley graduates to the first team from New York Red Bulls II, having moved there following a coaching education that arguably began in his playing days, but on paper began with a stint as an assistant to his father, Bob, at Norwegian club Stabæk.

After leaving Stabæk in September 2024, Bradley has been on a varied journey that prepared him for this moment as he takes charge of a senior team as a head coach for the first time.

The move to Harrison to coach NYRB II in June 2025 provided an opportunity for him and his family to return to his New Jersey roots, but not before he embedded himself in the wider Red Bull soccer system. 

Bradley spent time observing operations at Red Bull’s Salzburg franchise and was also able to have several conversations with the organization's Head of Global Soccer, Jürgen Klopp. 

Additional experience came in the form of a few weeks with the Canadian men’s national team, assisting head coach Jesse Marsch, himself a former Red Bull soccer employee.

Bradley’s short coaching career to date has all been building up to this. He gets the chance to begin his head coach journey in his home state at the club with whom he began his senior playing career in 2004, when they were still known as the MetroStars.

Local links are important in soccer, sometimes more so than previous success and qualifications, so this is an ideal starting point for Bradley and potentially an ideal hire for the New York Red Bulls themselves. 

It helps give them a sense of identity that is not always easy for MLS franchises to find. This will come not only from Bradley’s brief schooling in Red Bull soccer, and the approach to the game promoted by a multiclub ownership group, but also from his links to the history of the franchise and the locality in the pre-Red Bull days.

And, unlike the first team, Bradley’s own Red Bull side did make the playoffs last season. They went even further than that, winning the whole thing. His promotion to the first team is not forced through solely by convenience, the “Bradley” name, or his history with the club; it comes on merit. On the back of genuine success.

Under Bradley’s watch, NYRB II topped the Eastern Conference, following on from where previous head coach and now Bradley's first team assistant, Ibrahim Sekagya, had left off. Then came the playoff success, which all combined to produce a win percentage of 71.43% for Bradley in his first head coaching role.

Bradley wasn’t the only member of staff at the club promoted ahead of the 2026 season, as Julian de Guzman replaced Jochen Schneider as the team’s Head of Sport in October last year.

De Guzman has spoken of a change in style, but it’s not immediately clear what that entails in the context of a Red Bull group that tends to favor high-pressing and/or counter-attacking, amid talk of moving towards a more possession-oriented approach.

While possession and counter-attacking are incompatible, it is possible to be a possession team and a counter-pressing team. Winning the ball back quickly after losing it was one of the key tenets of Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona teams, even though they were more well known for their possession and passing. The two ideas can exist together, but getting such consistent, constant dominance on both sides of the ball from an MLS team, especially one that failed to reach the playoffs, could prove difficult.

There have been plenty of changes at the Red Bulls on the field as well as off it, though, which might go some way to helping them achieve the desired style of play. Bradley’s early press conferences should also give us more details of what the desired style is, even if only gradually.

The new look will be seen on the field primarily through the arrivals of Cade Cowell and US-born Mexico international Jorge Ruvalcaba, with the latter joining Emil Forsberg and Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting among the team’s designated players.

Some of the top performers from Sekagya's and Bradley's NYRB II team might benefit from their coaches progressing to the first team. Two Central American wonderkids, Andy Rojas of Costa Rica and Rafael Mosquera of Panama, and Argentine Nehuén Benedetti were among the standouts in that team, but 16-year-old American midfielder Adri Mehmeti might yet prove to be most useful to the squad's depth deeper in midfield.

There have also been numerous first-team players leaving the club, including some familiar faces such as goalkeeper Carlos Coronel and defender Sean Nealis, as well as the highly-rated young defender Noah Eile, who returned to Europe. Lewis Morgan departed, too, following a couple of great seasons but also two more disrupted by injury.

Plenty of questions will be answered early in the season, not least that of what the defense will look like and what Bradley’s intentions are for this team.

Through Bradley, the 2026 season strengthens this team’s links to New Jersey, which the Red Bulls would do well to lean on more in terms of their identity, while it also looks set to attempt to tweak the identity of Red Bull soccer itself.

There’s the intrigue provided by the new coach’s first steps in a head role at senior team level, and the idea that after failing to qualify for the playoffs last year for the first time in 16 seasons, things can only get better in 2026. 

Playoff qualification will be the aim, but Bradley will be hoping for and aiming for more, both in terms of how the team looks on the field and how it looks in the league table, and rightly so.