Red Bulls Hire Hans Backe As The Teams New Manager

By: Dave Martinez | January 7th, 2010

hansbacke Per Red Bulls Media Press Release:

SECAUCUS, NJ- Red Bull New York announced today that it has named Hans Backe as the club’s new head coach. Backe, who has almost three decades of European coaching experience, will retain assistant coach Richie Williams and goalkeeper coach Des McAleenan for his staff. Jeremy Holsopple will also join the staff as the team’s Strength and Conditioning Coach. The Red Bulls will introduce Backe to the local media at a later date.

“I have followed Hans’ career for many years and I think he will be an excellent coach for this team,” said Red Bull New York General Manager and Sporting Director Erik Soler. “Hans brings a vast amount of experience from a variety of different clubs in Europe and he has been a fantastic mentor for many young and established players. We are confident that he will be able to help our club accomplish our goal of competing for a MLS Cup.”

“I am pleased that Richie Williams and Des McAleenan will remain with the club,” Soler continued. “They are both important to the success of the organization with their depth of player and league knowledge.”

“I am extremely excited to join the Red Bulls,” Backe said. “It is evident with the stadium and the resources available that Red Bull is very committed to making this club the best in Major League Soccer. I hope that I can bring my expertise to the club and build a winning squad for our supporters.”

Backe enjoyed success in a number of European leagues, capturing four Danish titles with FC Copenhagen (2000-01, 2002-03 and 2003-04) and Aalborg BK (1998-99). He also won the Danish Cup in 2004 and the Danish Super Cup in 2001 and 2004 with Copenhagen. Backe was with Aalborg from 1998-2000 and headed Copenhagen from 2001-05.

The 57-year-old Swede joins the Red Bulls after a short stint with English League Two side, Notts County. Prior to being hired by Notts County, Backe worked as an assistant manager at Manchester City in the English Premiership with former England National Team manager, Sven-Goran Eriksson, from 2007-08. Backe later joined Eriksson’s staff when Eriksson became the Mexican National Team head coach on June 3, 2008.

Backe started his illustrious career with Swedish club, Djurgardens IF, before moving to other major teams in Scandinavia including Stabek, Hammarby IF, Osters IF and AIK. He has also coached at SV Salzburg and Greek Super League team, Panathinakos.

Before coaching, Backe played professionally for a number of Swedish clubs, including AIK and IF Brommapojkarna. Backe also worked as a soccer analyst and commentator for Swedish TV4 and was an advisor to Osters IF.

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Choice Hotel

Appear on dude, these facts* and proof* i mean who is posting* lol :P
Happy Camper

wrong choice.

HC
Larry

It is not an issue of manager, foreign etc..home grown and so on..the question is, Can the manager put the players in the right position to win. Can the manager realize the strongest player for each position and make them play as a unit. Osorio kept changing and when their is uncertainty in football, you will lose more than win. So, Backe will need to focus on that. Hopefully, he'll use Richie Williams knowledge of the league and the players within the league to formulate a winning program. Don't expect a championship this year, it's not going to happen, however, fans should expect the club to improve and make the playoffs, at minimum.
Dave Martinez

Tommy - hysterical. lol.
Pico

Dave, something I posted at SBI about this issue:

...
I am really perplexed by the knee jerk reaction in regards to this announcement and to the apparent phobia to a foreign coach. I have a couple of questions about this issue:

Given the number of foreign coaches that have passed through MLS and failed, is there a statistical analysis of the average time of employment at their MLS teams and their club records prior to joining the league? Is there a similar comparison for coaches from within the league or with some kind of MLS experience?

Most every American publication and blog bring up the issue of necessary MLS experience as a requirement, but the question is up to what point are we making it something obscure as voodoo when it is really not?

Let me frame the question differently. You have a neophyte MLS coach (soccer is young in the US and the league is not even two decades old) who knows the quirkiness of the system on one side, and a foreign coach who does not know MLS but has plenty of experience evaluating, teaching, handling players and competing at higher levels on the other. If you had to invest two years to make up for each others' deficiency, which one would you take? Do you think that if given the time, a foreign coach will not learn the way MLS works? I say two years because I do not believe any of the foreign coaches has had that much time to accomplish anything.

I am not going to deny that some really bad coaching decisions have been made for the wrong reasons, but this one seems different because the new RB GM gave the parameters of what they are looking for, why they are doing it that way, and they know what to expect to accomplish.

Now, everyone likes to harp about how bad the JCO regime was, and there is no doubt that it was atrocious, but it is also be pointed that he had the assistance of a MLS insider in Agoos and still managed to screw the whole thing. Take the case of Dave Checketts who has had some success with RSL, he is not an MLS insider but he knows how to run a sports organization.

In the end, the problem with recycling or sticking to MLS people only is like inbreeding. You can only take the gene pool so far until you run into problems.

Cheers
dave martinez

Let's all thank Larry for the reminder to mgmt! Haha. Nice one.
Alex

The best part of this news is that Richie Williams is staying on. MLS is so difficult for outsiders to understand that it doesn't matter how talented a coach is, but Backe having Williams to help him navigate the quirks of our league while he focuses on the team will be huge. I was dreading the inevitable Tony Adams signing, so I'm pretty happy with this.
Larry

I guess management saw my countdown and acted.
dave martinez

And Julian, thanks for the kind words. I hope this new mgmt team rights this franchise ....
dave martinez

LOL mike!!! The difference is that Hans opinions were impactful at Citeh. Osorio on the other hand ....
Mike from linden

Hans = former assistant of Man City, Osorio = former assistant of Man City. One similarity too many for me
Tommy Wong

I think that actually a lot of people read Dave's post and don't comment them.

who me?
Julian

I'm a big Red Bulls fan, being a New Jersey native and all (can't wait to see the new stadium this summer!). Just wanted to say that you do a great job covering the team, Dave, and I read just about all your posts even if I don't comment on them.

I'm not sure if this is a good move but I think it will be. He's clearly got the coaching experience and he's been in the sport long enough to know what works and what doesn't. I just hope he doesn't have too much trouble adapting to the American way of doing things, but if he can quickly overcome that he should be a good coach. At least I hope so.