Bob Bradley Named U.S. National Team Coach

Tonight, the U.S. Soccer Federation named Bob Bradley the interim head coach for the U.S. Men's National Team.

The team has been without a coach since the dismissal of Bruce Arena after the World Cup.

Bob Bradley currently serves as the coach for Chivas USA, and his success in turning what was barely a minor league team into a play-off contending franchise clearly caught the eye of USSF President Sunil Gulati.

Bradley's career in Major League Soccer is most noted for his record. He holds the most wins of any head coach in the MLS with 114.

Bradley spent two years under Bruce Arena at D.C. United in the 90's, and then moved on to take the reigns of the Chicago Fire, who won the MLS Cup in their first season. The Fire qualified for the play-offs every year after but failed to win another championship.

In 2003, Bradley's career took a turn for the worst when he moved to New York to coach the Metrostars. For three years, the Metrostars struggled to enter the play-offs and once there failed to advance.

After nearly missing the play-offs in 2005, the Metrostars replaced Bradley with Mo Johnston, who guided the team into the play-offs safely but again failed to earn a result.

Chivas USA welcomed Bradley with open arms after falling on their faces in the 2005 season. Bradley with the help of a few late signings in 2005 (Paco Palencia and Juan Pablo Garcia) revamped the look of Chivas for 2006.

This new Chivas side included three active Mexican National Team players, Juan Pablo Garcia, Paco Palencia, and Claudio Suarez. Although all of them made the cut of 36 for the World Cup roster, only Suarez traveled with the final 23 man roster to the World Cup.

Bradley also snagged two former Fire regulars in Jesse Marsch and Ante Razov as well as stealing two former Metrostars, Tim Regan and Jason Hernandez.

Bradley's new team featured real fire power and some well known faces. The team was very successful earning a third place finish in the Western Conference with 43 points.

However, Bradley's new Chivas team was well over the salary cap with Paco Palencia making an estimated $1.2 Million. It is clear that for the team to sign four Mexican World Cup veterans in Ramon Ramirez, Juan Pablo Garcia, Paco Palencia, and Claudio Suarez as well as league veterans in Razov and Marsch that team went way over the cap. This also fails to mention the addition of John O'Brien from ADO Den Haag.

If Bob Bradley can't manage to steal an MLS Cup with an inflated roster, how does he plan on running a successful U.S. National Team?

Although his most recent accomplishment of pulling a 180 for the Chivas franchise looks impressive on the outside, when you dig deeper the questions get tougher.

The evidence suggests that Bradley isn't the coach he was in the 90's. He might do well as an interim coach, but the U.S. Soccer Federation would do well to find someone else to take over permanently.