Joining an ever-lengthening list of relevant facts that completely slipped my mind today was the fact that Bob Bradley and Piotr Nowak have worked together closely before - e.g. as captain and coach of the Chicago Fire from 1998 to 2002. It took this article to jog my memory...I have no excuse.
On ESPN's site, Andrea Canales makes a pretty good case for the wisdom of this move, identifying it as a sign that Bradley "has just begun to fight" to make the USMNT job permanent. Still, I was gratified to see I wasn't the only one wondering about the relationship. In an apparently prescient post to his blog about Tom Soehn replacing Nowak at DC United, Ives Galarcep suggested the possibility of Nowak joining Bradley in the U.S. program. But he also tucked in the following toward the bottom:
"This is also assuming Bradley has forgiven Nowak for all his Jose Mourinho-like sideline histrionics, some of which have definitely rubbed Bradley the wrong way."
The "this" refers the question of whether Bradley would try to pick up Nowak. We know that happened. The question is how far Canales is correct in dubbing this a career-preserving maneuver against the more immediate question of how well Bradley and Nowak will work together in roles more equal than those they had with the Fire.
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