U.S. coaches like Bob Bradley have had to work hard for European jobs

The path to Europe hasn't been well lit for American soccer coaches.

Only a handful from the U.S. have paced a sideline in one of its pressure-cooker professional leagues, and most quickly discover that getting a foot through the door on the other side of the Atlantic is half the battle. Winning enough games to avoid getting tossed back is an equally formidable challenge.

Bob Bradley is the latest American to charge into the heart of the world's most popular sport, arriving on a continent where soccer dominates the food chain and coaches are routinely chewed up and spit out before their first anniversary on the job. Hired earlier this month to manage Swansea City, a struggling Premier League team based in the second-largest city of Wales, Bradley will be the first American to lead a top division team onto the pitch.

"To get a chance as an American in England, in the Premier League? That's incredible," said Joe Enochs, a Northern California native who last year became manager of VfL Osnabruck in Germany, a third-division Bundesliga team.

Bradley will be thrown into the fire Saturday night, making his debut against Arsenal, winners of two of the past three FA Cups. His arrival in European's highest circuit is a feather in the cap for U.S. soccer -- and Major League Soccer, in particular. MLS is where Bradley built his coaching résumé and helped bring worldwide attention and credibility to the 20-year-old league.

But how much staying power Bradley will have with the Swans won't depend on his place of birth or even past accomplishments. Now that he's put both feet through the front door at Swansea City, it's all about wins and losses.

A results business

"It's certainly about winning, no matter where you're from," said Gregg Berhalter, who became the first American to coach professional soccer in Europe when he was hired by Swedish club Hammarby in December 2012. "There's a lot of turnover in the coaching ranks in Europe."

At Swansea City, Bradley takes over a team that has collected just one point since Aug. 13 (one draw and five defeats in six games) and sits 17th out of 20 teams in the Premier League. Berhalter said he expects Swansea City to extend a longer leash with Bradley than Hammarby did with him.

"There's going to be high expectations, but I would hope they're reasonable, given where they are in the table and how they've performed recently," Berhalter said. "Bob is used to this. He's done this before, and he'll find a way."

Berhalter made a name for himself in Europe while playing there from 1994-2009. Hammarby was his first head-coaching position. He vividly remembers opening day at Söderstadion.

"One of the great things in football is to go to opening day," he said. "It's just a club in Sweden, but if you experience that -- there's a walk across the bridge with about 15,000 people -- and the atmosphere in the stadium is incredible. ... To experience that for the first time -- that was the first time I ever coached a team -- and to have that type of experience, was pretty memorable."

Berhalter lasted just 19 months as manager of Hammarby, failing to generate enough offense to lift the club out of Sweden's second tier and into the Allsvenskan, the country's top division. His quick exit was hardly unique to Hammarby, which is currently on its ninth manager since 2009.

"It's a very passionate club," Berhalter said. "Very high expectations."

Berhalter wasn't without a job for long. The Columbus Crew hired him four months later, and he guided them to the MLS Cup in his second season. It was his experience in MLS that first opened the door with Hammarby: 49 percent of the Swedish club has been owned by Anschutz Entertainment Group since 2002, and AEG also owns the L.A. Galaxy, where Berhalter played from 2009-11, before serving as an assistant coach for a season.

"I had instant credibility," Berhalter said of his arrival in Sweden.

Bradley's ties to MLS also reportedly played a role in his latest hiring. Swansea City underwent an ownership change in the spring, and the leader of the investment group is Jason Levien, an American who also is co-owner of D.C. United, an original MLS team and where Bradley served as an assistant coach during the organization's first two seasons in 1996-97.

Then there are the American players who have moved to Europe and caught the eye. Veterans such as Alejandro Bedoya and Geoff Cameron and youngsters such as Emerson Hyndman and Matt Miazga -- all terrific players who were born and developed in the U.S. -- have found homes in big European leagues.

"The quality of players coming over to Europe has drastically improved since I came over," Enochs said. "With MLS, the young kids are getting a chance to play with established players, and that has obviously pushed up the quality of players coming to Europe."

Enochs has never played or coached in MLS. He played college soccer at Sacramento State, spent two years with a semi-professional team in the San Francisco Bay Area and then, at the urging of a college roommate, headed to Germany in 1994. He hooked up with Osnabrück two years later and continued playing for the club until 2008, finishing with 359 league appearances.

By then, Enochs was married to a German woman, was building a family and owned a sports bar in Osnabrück, aptly named "Joe Enochs Sportsbar." When an interim head-coaching position opened up at Osnabrück in 2011, Enochs was ready for the challenge, and the club was comfortable with Enochs. He acquired the necessary UEFA licenses to become the permanent head coach and was awarded that title in October 2015.

"If I didn't play with this club for 12 years, I wouldn't have gotten the chance," he said.

You want to coach soccer here? Really?

Dennis Lukens found his way into the European professional coaching ranks, but it wasn't through MLS or an overseas connection. Lukens is a native New Yorker who has spent the past six years coaching in the Ukraine. The 64-year-old currently manages PFC Shipbuilders, a club that was formed in May and gained professional status in July, when it was placed in Ukraine's second division.

Lukens has learned how to speak Russian since he has been in the country, gained the required licenses, turned clubs in the right direction and made a name for himself in the former Soviet Union, where he's the only American ever to coach a professional soccer team.

Yet there have been many days when he has wondered if it was worth the effort.

Lukens coached at the college level and for a handful of lower-level professional teams in the U.S. before a two-week trip to the Ukraine turned into a six-year stay. Lukens was visiting the country with his wife, who is Ukrainian, and decided to look into some possible coaching positions.

He contacted a number of clubs and was surprised with a few reactions.

"When you're American and you're calling football clubs and saying, 'I'd like to coach your team or be part of the staff, they're like, 'What?'" Lukens said. "I had three teams say, 'Well, we've got a basketball team in our town.'"

Lukens eventually landed a job as the scouting director for Sevastopol, a Ukrainian Premier League team. After two years, he accepted another supporting role with third-division Krystal Kherson. Following a brutal start to the 2012 season, Lukens was given the chance to conduct a training session during a weeklong camp near the Black Sea. He jumped at the opportunity.

The players seemed to respond to his teachings; Krystal then went out and won its next game. The following week, Lukens ran the training sessions again. Krystal won again, prompting the president of the club, who was also the head coach, to step aside and hand Lukens the reins.

Krystal ended up moving from 14th to seventh place under Lukens' guidance and also posted a victory in a friendly against Ukraine Premier League team FC Chornomorets Odesa. Suddenly, everyone from the bus driver who took Lukens to practice to the barista who served his coffee was congratulating him.

"When I became head coach, I didn't expect it, but it went viral," he said. "It was on every single web site in the whole Soviet Union. They brought two different teams of TV guys down to watch my training. I was on a TV show, the primary soccer show in all of Ukraine, which I think reached six or seven million people, and they did a special on me. So, I went from nobody knew who I was to actually becoming famous."

Lukens is still amazed at how his life changed so quickly and dramatically.

"I went from the American that people thought might not know anything, that might be better as a basketball coach, to now people respecting me because we won," Lukens said. "That's all it comes down to, and Bob Bradley will tell you the same thing, I'm sure.

"If you're winning, it doesn't matter. As long as you win, they're going to accept you."