The age when North American clubs look to England and the wider British Isles with a child’s embrace, beseeching input from the mother country’s coaching bosom to take the domestic game on, has long since passed. Or so some critics would argue. A new, forward-thinking generation of coaches not steeped in the 4-4-2 and an unadorned, direct style of football rule the waves in this epoch, they postulate. And this legion of coaches are increasingly young, fresh and, most importantly, American. While there might be some historical merit to the spirit of the argument against the British-style coach, it is perhaps itself a little outdated, not to say somewhat harsh on someone like Carl Robinson and his stylish Vancouver Whitecaps, for instance.

Some 20 years on from the birth of Major League Soccer, some of the men who as players helped mold the country’s top division into what it has become today now form an integral portion of the younger cohort of the domestic coaching ranks.

Broadly successful elder statesmen like Bruce Arena and Sigi Schmid are followed by a seemingly blossoming rank and file. Head coaches such as Sporting Kansas City’s Peter Vermes. DC United’s Ben Olsen. New England Revolution’s Jay Heaps. Columbus Crew’s Gregg Berhalter. New York Red Bulls’ Jesse Marsch. Behind them, too, are some well-thought-of assistants. Then there are the firmly rooted foreign coaches partly schooled in MLS ways after successful stints in the league. Robinson would be one. As would FC Dallas head coach Oscar Pareja.

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Yet the country has yet to see a coach leave home shores and make a name with instant recognition. Amid the chattering classes of the global game’s chief draws in Europe, that is not always easy. It is legitimately argued that these are early days for American soccer. That would particularly be the case on the coaching front. American players are now a common presence in the Old World top divisions of England and Germany, for instance, though less so among its biggest clubs. Nowhere in that same equation, however, is there an American manager. That should probably come as no surprise. The approach to managerial appointments in Europe can often seem almost incestuous. An old boys’ mentality persists, a propensity for club kin sometimes predominant. If not kin, a visit to the known quantities of those who served the neighbors to a reasonable standard serves as a useful substitute.

The United States has long struggled for soccer acceptance. Strides have been made. Players of the quality of Clint Dempsey and Tim Howard have laid down a marker. Though suffering growing pains of another kind at present, the national team has improved, claiming some sizable scalps along the way. At this stage, it seems obvious Americans mean business. Still developing: yes. But they mean to be taken seriously. Still, barriers are difficult to break down. “In Europe, we are seen as non-experts in soccer,” says Joe Enochs, the newly installed head coach of Vfl Osnabruck in the German third division. Enochs, American born and raised, has been in Germany for 20 years. He arrived first at St Pauli, before beginning a long association with Osnabruck as both player and coach. So much so, at the club at least he is viewed less as a foreigner and more one of their own. In wider Germany, however, that is not necessarily a privilege extended. At the top level, he points to the stream of competent performers who have crossed the Atlantic and held their own. “Players come over but not coaches. Until Bob.”

Bob Bradley. A man Vancouver’s Robinson credits as US coaching’s leading light. The man who led the United States national team to an inspiring Confederations Cup final in 2009. Who coached the Egyptian national team amid trying circumstances to the brink of World Cup qualification. Granted, both national team stints ended sourly. The US job was curtailed after a familiar Gold Cup defeat to Mexico. In Egypt, a heavy defeat to Ghana loomed over his departure. But history has perhaps proven kind. His resume entries prior, across college at Princeton and in MLS, principally with Chicago Fire, are solid. Now Bradley is attracting glances for his work at unfancied Stabaek in Norway’s top division. In his first season, he carried a newly promoted team tipped for the trap door to a mid-table finish and a semi-final appearance in the national cup. This year, his second, seems miraculous. By all accounts, over the course the 57-year-old lost some of his best players due to enforced sales. Reputedly operating one of the lowest budgets in the league, Stabaek currently sit second in the table. As the season nears its close, a Europa League place next year looks likely.

For Bradley, getting to Europe was a long-held ambition. The stumbling block was opportunity. “Even though there have been players that have done well in Europe, it’s still a battle for respect whether you’re a player or a coach,” Bradley tells the Guardian. “On the playing side, there are certainly guys that did well enough that one might have thought there would have been bigger clubs interested but that didn’t always materialize. So I think overall, as much as the game has grown in the US, and again you can see it through MLS, you can see it through the different successes of the national team, still in Europe with all of the football that goes on, to earn respect as an American is a little harder.”

Opportunity again might dictate whether Bradley makes another leap up the ladder. Regardless, the narrative of his career seems to add up to a robust pitch for a bigger job. Yet the chatter has been limited. Molde, reigning Norwegian champions, were reportedly interested. Though a bigger job, they would surely amount to a sideways movement, the ostensible American flag carrier still lurking in the European shadows. David Wagner, the German-American head coach of Borussia Dortmund II, the Bundesliga giants’ second string, cautions patience. Wagner has a foot in both camps. Somewhat. He represented the United States at international level but spent his playing career in Germany, where he was born. His coaching pedigree, too, is German-rooted. He served as a Jurgen Klopp lieutenant until the now Liverpool manager left Dortmund last summer. There are many factors to snagging a European remit, Wagner notes, some more obvious than others. Language. The interpretation of success at MLS level. Is your national team in vogue, like world champions Germany or Spain before them? Perhaps the owners want a boss of the old school. Perhaps someone young. They may be attracted to a background in sports science. That type of academic background has served Wagner well aligned with a playing career with the likes of FSV Mainz and Schalke. “To get the first job in Europe, it is not so easy,” he says in fluent English underpinned by the dulcet tones of his German brogue. “If Bob Bradley does a good job in Norway, he will get a bigger club. Next step is maybe Sweden, Denmark, then Germany. Or the English Championship is very attractive.” But what about the Premier League? Bradley was recently linked with Sunderland. Speaking prior to Klopp’s appointment at Liverpool, Wagner was clear. “There is a long, long way to go to see an American coach in England at the highest level. England is an island. It is not easy to be a coach who is not British unless you are an outstanding coach like [Louis] van Gaal or [Jose] Mourinho. As I know there was never a German coach working in the Premier League, only Felix Magath for a couple of months at Fulham, and he won two or three titles in Germany.”

In Vancouver, Robinson, who might never have taken control of the Whitecaps had preferred option Bradley decided to return to MLS, is more pragmatic. “For young American managers, the key to development for them to going abroad, I keep saying, is Bob Bradley,” he recently told the Guardian. “For me he is probably the most high-profile US manager out there. You need him to be successful. You need him to maybe get a job at a top European club. He sets the standard for everyone else. If the biggest name manager can’t get a job in England or Scotland it might be difficult for other people to get a job. It depends on ownership. A lot of them have got American owners, which is only going to be a good thing for American managers.” The Scotland option is apt in Bradley’s particular set of circumstances. Norwegian manager Ronny Deila got the head coach’s job at perennial Scottish champions Glasgow Celtic on the back of success at Norwegian top-flight club Stromsgodset. And Scotland has proven a regular springboard to lower-level Premier League jobs and the Championship in the recent past.

Bradley garners a lot of praise. He also left a legacy stateside. The current crop of young, up-and-coming managers and coaches boasts a swell of his former charges, including Red Bulls head coach Marsch and Philadelphia’s Jim Curtin. And yet, the question might be is the American management ranks even reasonably deep enough to warrant higher-level interest? Some might argue there is less than there appears. Bradley is noted for how deeply he thinks about the game. His cerebral approach to football and how hard he works is not always present in others. But could more eyes be cast across the Atlantic in the wake of Bradley’s success?

Things didn’t work out quite so well in Europe for Columbus Crew’s Gregg Berhalter. Until July 2013, he was in charge of Swedish second division club Hammarby. It was his first managerial job. Despite a fourth-place finish in his maiden season then one of the strongest defenses in the league in his second, impatience over the club’s promotion hopes led to the former LA Galaxy and US international defender’s dismissal. His team were in fifth place at the time. Berhalter looks back on the experience as mostly positive. For one, he is among a small American contingent who have been given the opportunity at a European club. He thinks others are capable should the chance arise.

He is philosophical about the different challenge that awaits away from the U.S. game. The intense fan culture. The lofty expectations, even at a club like Hammarby. “I was there about a year and three quarters,” Berhalter explains. “I think in Hammarby that was wasn’t new. I was the eighth manager five years. I lasted pretty long by Hammarby standards. That’s the nature of the game in Europe, right? If you look at the English Championship and the second Bundesliga, you know the tenure of these coaches are very, very short. You know you’re in it, you have to make an impact right away and if you don’t they get the next guy. I think the fortunate thing for people in the system, where if you fail you get other chances. Whereas if it’s your first experience and you’re not successful, maybe you don’t get another chance, especially if you’re a foreign coach.” Mention of those already circulating in the system is a familiar one. That job tenuously linked to Bradley? Sunderland plumped for fully paid up member of the old boy network Sam Allardyce.

Speaking before his name was linked with the Sunderland job, Bradley was ponderous about whether he could prove the US manager who sparks keener interest in the American coaching stable. His contract is up at the end of the season. He may move on. He may not. “It’s very hard to know exactly what, when a club is looking for a manager, you never quite know exactly who’s making the decision, what are they looking for, have they done thorough research, are they guessing,” he considers. “There’s plenty, as much as I give credit before and say that there’s many good football men in Europe, if we’re really honest, there’s a lot of clubs that hire, well there’s a lot of managers in Europe that aren’t very good too.”

It may simply be a matter of time and the right circumstances. “Soccer has only become popular in the past 20 years perhaps,” says Berhalter, who has not given up ambitions of managing in Europe again at some point. “In the same way as it’s taken a way for players to get to the top level, it’s going to take a while to develop coaches.” Enochs lauds some unique US advantages: the ability to experiment as a coach at the college level in a way not possible in even European lower leagues, the ability to tap into high-level coaching techniques deployed in other sports like basketball, baseball and football.

Though a pessimist over how long it might be before an American makes the breakthrough, Wagner, who has ambitions of his own to manage at the top level one day, is certain of one thing: that the idea of the American novice is arcane. “For me that is nonsense. Football is your passion. It is not a job. You love this game. You are always thinking about this game,” he says. “I think, at the end, quality will have success, quality will go its way.”

For Bradley, there is a quiet confidence. “I’ll keep working. Somebody will figure it out.”