Let’s give a warm Philadelphia welcome to new Red Bull coach Bradley Carnell:

Carnell coached St. Louis during their expansion season. They came out on fire playing a German high-press style, found immediate success, and then crashed down to Earth, hard. Carnell was fired a few months into his second year and he now replaces Jim Curtin in Philly.

This feels like a lateral move on paper. Carnell comes from the Red Bull system, where he was an assistant and later interim head coach in New York. Philadelphia sporting director Ernst Tanner also comes from the Red Bull system, so the obvious thought is that the Union will go back to playing the frenetic pressing style that you saw here in 2019 and 2020, which St. Louis and New York and many other teams have played over the years.

It’s funny, because Bob Bradley, when coaching LAFC, once famously called the Union “a Red Bull team.” It was a bit of an oversimplification, but he wasn’t wrong.

The general tenets of Union play back then were frenetic counter pressing, cluster defending, and direct transition. It evolved over the years to look less German, and they added some wrinkles to their style, but teams that swarm, force mistakes, and try to move forward quickly now get the general label of being “Red Bull” teams, so until we see what this team actually looks like on the field, we’ll run with the “Red Bull Philadelphia” bit.


Jokes aside, here’s what I think is most important:

This is a style you can play while being cheap. You need fitness to press and run 400 miles in a game. Who has fitness and can run 400 miles in a game? Young kids. And where do young kids come from? The Union academy. How much do young kids cost? Not much.

Considering the Union’s lack of first-team spending and aversion to high transfer fees, this is the philosophy that makes sense here. You bring in a pragmatic German Red Bull guy, you play the Red Bull style with a Red Bull coach, and you do it with kids coming through your academy. If you can’t or won’t spend on designated players who don’t want to be in Chester anyway, you go with this approach instead.

What’s somewhat ironic is that New York did a lot of this with unremarkable players in recent years, then VOILA! – they pay Emil Forsberg $5 million and go on a run to MLS Cup. Isn’t it funny how that works out? If Carnell is the guy, I don’t hate it, because I’ve resigned myself to the fact that this is the limited framework of a Jay Sugarman ownership. The Red Bull style is worn out and a little bit boring in 2024, but it makes a lot of sense for this club. Some of the Union’s best moments during their brilliant, five-year run were Brenden Aaronson and Leon Flach forward-defending and transitional masterpieces, and for a city that loves blue collar intensity and blah blah fuckin’ blah, it’ll be re-accepted. It’s not the most beautiful style of soccer ever played, but it’s effective.

Of course, I could be completely wrong. Maybe they come out playing 4-1-3-2 with a Regista and surprise us all, but I highly doubt it. But on a more serious and less cynical note, welcome Coach Carnell and best of luck. This franchise is turning a needed corner and change is always intriguing. You have to move it forward at some point and accept that the greatest run in Union history is over.