Bob Bradley will coach LAFC next season. (Andy Mead/YCJ Photo)

By Michael Lewis

FrontRowSoccer.com Editor

Twenty years after he was named the coach of the expansion Chicago Fire, Bob Bradley has a new challenge with a new expansion team.

The former U.S. national and MetroStars head coach was hired as the first coach of LAFC, the 2018 expansion side announced Thursday.

Bradley, 59, will return to Major League Soccer for the first time in more than a decade. In 2006, he left Chivas USA to become the interim head coach of the U.S. national team before he was named fulltime boss a year later. Bradley coached the team in the 2010 World Cup before he was fired in 2011, when Jurgen Klinsmann took over the team.

Since then, Bradley has directed the Egyptian national team, Norwegian club Stabaek, French side Le Havre and Swansea City in the English Premier League. He was the first American to guide an EPL side, but was sacked after less than three months into the job.

Bradley was an assistant under Bruce Arena with D.C. United in 1996 and 1997 before becoming Fire coach. In Chicago, Bradley directed the side to the MLS Cup crown in its first year. He remained with the team through the end of the 2002 season before joining the MetroStars.

Bradley did not find the same success with the New Jersey club as he did in the Windy City as he was controversially fired by then general manager Alexi Lalas toward the end of the 2005 season.

Front Row Soccer editor Michael Lewis has covered 13 World Cups (eight men, five women), seven Olympics and 25 MLS Cups. He has written about New York City FC, New York Cosmos, the New York Red Bulls and both U.S. national teams for Newsday and has penned a soccer history column for the Guardian.com. Lewis, who has been honored by the Press Club of Long Island and National Soccer Coaches Association of America, is the former editor of BigAppleSoccer.com. He has written seven books about the beautiful game and has published ALIVE AND KICKING The incredible but true story of the Rochester Lancers. It is available at Amazon.com.