A Long Road Prepared Anthony Hudson for His USMNT Moment

Anthony Hudson really wanted to coach, and he was willing to do it for free.

The future could wait. Certainty and stability mattered less in the moment than simply being on the field that day. So during the 2011–12 English soccer season, shortly after being fired by fifth-tier Newport County, the 30-year-old was spending time as a volunteer coach at Dagenham & Redbridge, a club in east London that would finish its campaign just six points above the League Two relegation zone.

“It was just an amazing opportunity,” says Hudson, who lasted six months at Newport. “I used to drive in every day, do some work with the first team, finishing, help out where I could.”

Dagenham’s veteran manager John Still had told Hudson the smartest thing to do after getting sacked was “to get back to work straight away.” And it was shortly before a home game against Gillingham that Hudson’s eagerness to do just that paid off.

Still introduced Hudson to Peter Taylor, a friend and well-traveled coach who’d recently left Bradford City to coach Bahrain’s national team. Still departed for a pregame meeting with Dagenham’s players, and left Hudson and Taylor to hang out in his office.

“We chatted and got on really well. He’s telling me they were playing Sweden soon, and I was like, ‘That must be amazing,’” Hudson recalls.

“Then like two weeks later, he called me up and he said, ‘Look, do you want to come and be our Olympic coach?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, absolutely.’ I remember flying out there a few weeks later, and I went straight to Japan because the under-23s had a [qualifier] against Japan,” he continues. “It was my first camp. And I just remember landing, dropping my stuff at the hotel, and then I’m on the training field in Tokyo putting cones down, and like a week before I was at Dagenham & Redbridge. Life’s crazy.”

A passion for the game that’s flourished despite disappointment, a readiness to embrace unconventional or modest opportunities, and a warmth and eagerness that transforms acquaintances into advocates have taken Hudson on a one-of-a-kind ride through coaching. He’s worked with rising stars like Harry Kane and once opposed Cristiano Ronaldo. He toiled on the muddy fields used by lower-level teams in England and the U.S., where he managed a USL side that played at a Maryland high school. He’s been in charge at continental championships and World Cup qualifiers, and was a couple of goals away from taking New Zealand to Russia in 2018. Hudson worked with reserves and loanees under Harry Redknapp at Tottenham. He was a player-coach in Wilmington, N.C. And he’ll be leading the U.S. men’s national team when it hosts rival Mexico on Wednesday night in Arizona.

There’s never been a long-term plan. Hudson, 42, was rarely plotting two or three steps ahead. The Seattle-born son of Alan Hudson, a renowned former midfielder who enjoyed lengthy spells at Chelsea and Stoke City before joining the Sounders in 1979, Anthony was enchanted by the excitement and glamor of the game but also determined to blaze his own trail. His ties to both the U.S. and England helped pave the way to Wilmington in 2006. The Hammerheads’ manager at that time was Englishman David Irving, who’d played on both sides of the Atlantic. They connected through a mutual friend.

“One of the big reasons for me moving to America was to build a career for myself, because I was always the son of—even growing up I had to consciously really look at myself because all my beliefs and all my ideas, and everything that came out my mouth wasn’t me. It was my dad,” Hudson explains. “He was my hero growing up—what he did in the game. So I used to copy, and he had such a big opinion about the game and players. So I had to go and sort of really get to know who I was and build a career for myself. And that was probably another motivation for going to the States.”

If making his own name was the motivation to come, then rebuilding it was a reason to stay. Hudson was a rising star when he resigned from New Zealand, and it looked like a bit of a coaching coup when the Colorado Rapids hired him ahead of the 2018 MLS season. He’d been linked to Sunderland, among other opportunities, and Rapids sporting director Pádraig Smith called Hudson “one of the top and up-and-coming coaches in world football,” at his unveiling.

But the ensuing 17 months were a disaster. Nothing went right. Several signings didn’t work out and consistency proved elusive as Colorado won only eight MLS matches in 2018, finishing 21st overall with the league’s 11th-highest payroll. A 0-7-1 start to the ’19 campaign left Hudson feeling like the walls were closing in. That’s how it worked in England, after all. So he vented at a postgame press conference following a loss to Atlanta United, saying, “We are fighting at the bottom with a bottom group of players. … There are teams with a lot more quality than us, and that’s what we’re competing against.”

He was fired a few days later.

“I take full responsibility. I’m not gonna start pointing the finger at different things. I came in with probably a bit of an ego thinking I knew the league better than I did,” Hudson said last week.

“I think you have to have key principles or an overarching way of playing,” he continues. “But then when you’re handed a group of players, it’s important to adapt and set the team up in a shape, in a way, that helps get the best out of them. And I didn’t do that. I basically tried to put my way onto a group of players that probably didn’t help get the best out of them. So I came away from that learning a very big lesson. It was a tough one.”

It was a sharp blow to that “top and up-and-coming” reputation he’d been developing, one that led to opportunities like the week Hudson spent with José Mourinho at Real Madrid back in 2013. U.S. fans and media didn’t follow Bahrain or New Zealand. They knew only that Hudson flamed out fast in Colorado. It would’ve made sense if he was on the first flight back to London.

“It was tough. You’re a foreigner in another country. I had no family over in the States,” he says. “Getting fired is tough, and I thought about moving and then I thought, ‘You know what? I just can’t keep moving. I’ve been to the Middle East. I’ve been to New Zealand. I’ve been to America and after three or four years you build up all these good connections and good relationships, and you build a foundation of some type of community and then you leave?’

“So I decided, ‘Look, I’m here now. And even though it’s not gone well, I still want to build relationships. I believe in the game out here. I see some amazing things happening in the game here, and I want to help out in any way I can.’ So it was just a case of just one step at a time, trying to rebuild.”

Hudson loves the U.S. He says his father “especially” loves it, and that Alan, capped twice by England, insisted that his local pub in Chelsea hang American flags inside during the Qatar World Cup. And so Anthony stayed, hoping the same qualities that impressed the likes of Redknapp and Taylor might lead to something here.

“It’s really strange because I’m actually not someone who’s super extroverted. I don’t go out of my way to keep connections going. Like my personal life is—I don’t really like my phone. I don’t. I want to be left alone. I love my dogs,” says Hudson, who runs a rescue and shelter assistance organization called Forgotten Dogs Foundation in his spare time (the board includes Redknapp and U.S. women’s star Rose Lavelle).

“But also along the way you meet—I don’t have a huge amount of friends—but you meet some good people along the way that you instantly hit it off and you have a respect for, and I think I’ve been fortunate in that way to just, you know, bumble along sort of meeting people like Gregg [Berhalter],” Hudson continues. “You strike up a relationship, and you want to learn from them and ask advice and stuff like that. And yeah, there’s all these little connections where that’s happened, for sure.”

Berhalter competed against Hudson while at the Columbus Crew and believed his MLS adversary remained a coach with promise. So once Berhalter took over the U.S., he and former sporting director Earnie Stewart hired Hudson to coach the U-20s. In 2021, he was elevated to senior team assistant. He was with the U.S. when it won the Concacaf Gold Cup and Nations League that summer, as it navigated World Cup qualifying and then through the four matches in Qatar. That sort of promotion and responsibility might have seemed odd to those familiar only with what happened at Colorado. But bigger names have failed, improved and moved on.

“I can’t control what people say or what people think or what people write,” Hudson says. “I think in so many jobs, you know things are not always as good as everyone writes how good they are, and they’re also not as bad as people write how bad they are.”

Kellyn Acosta agrees. The U.S. and Los Angeles FC midfielder was a Rapid when Hudson arrived with fanfare and departed under a cloud. It’s worth noting when Acosta was contacted to speak about Hudson’s rebirth with the national team, LAFC was between a midweek Concacaf Champions League game and Sunday’s derby against the LA Galaxy. If Acosta had nothing nice to say about Hudson, he easily could’ve declined without prompting inference or suspicion. But he wanted to talk.

“In a coach’s career, similar to a player’s career, obviously we all have times in our career that don’t go as planned,” says Acosta, who was out of the national team for two years before returning in 2021 and evolving into an easy choice for the World Cup squad.

“I think as time goes on you evolve, you learn, and you adapt, and I think that he’s done just that. I’ve known him from the Colorado days, and we struggled when I first got there, but he’s a guy that I admire greatly—even working under him at Colorado. He’s a guy that’s super passionate and detail oriented,” Acosta adds. “He’s a delight to work under.”

Hudson was appointed interim U.S. manager when Berhalter’s contract expired, and his potential reappointment was scuttled by the scandal sparked by Claudio and Danielle Reyna’s accusations and then Stewart’s subsequent departure. Hudson coached last month’s Nations League group-stage wins over Grenada and El Salvador. He’ll be on the bench in Wednesday’s friendly outside Phoenix, and then he’ll almost certainly be in charge for June’s Nations League final four and this summer’s Gold Cup. U.S. Soccer is nearing the end of its search for Stewart’s successor, who will be charged with appointing the permanent national team coach. Hudson’s contract runs through August.

Meanwhile, Hudson’s appearance at last week’s Gold Cup draw in L.A., where he carried Concacaf’s most prestigious trophy onto the stage as reigning champ, was a reminder this is very real. The former Dagenham & Redbridge intern and Colorado Rapids washout is the U.S. coach, and he’ll be leading the American men in their biggest games this year.

To an outsider, the next three months represent a priceless and tantalizing opportunity. Do well, and that awkward year and a half in Colorado recedes further into history, perhaps destined to be a footnote on a lengthening résumé. Win a trophy or two, and doors inevitably will open—whether that’s with U.S. Soccer or MLS, or beyond.

Some insiders see it that way as well.

“Your failures aren’t who you are, and people shouldn’t hold on to what he experienced four years ago. That’s not who he is and that’s not what he wants to be known as,” Acosta says. “He has a great opportunity to kind of showcase all that he’s learned, all that he’s absorbed, and the direction he wants to head towards. … This is a huge opportunity for him to showcase himself and be in a better light.”

But Hudson doesn’t. He can’t. His journey has been about answering the door each time there’s a knock, and about doing whatever he had to do to be on the field that day. He learned hard lessons about what happens when there’s ego involved. So he’s not campaigning for the U.S. job—or any job for that matter. Just about every time he’s asked about his own plans or ambition, he defers to his players, to the program, to the progress he feels the team made under Berhalter and to his obligation to be the best steward possible.

“It’s just not in my thinking,” he says. “I don’t wake up every day and think, ‘You know what? I’m going to prove them wrong.’ I’ve moved on. A lot has happened since Colorado and a lot happened before Colorado. There’s more to my working career than Colorado Rapids.

“I’m more about just purely looking forward, wanting to grow, wanting to do a good job. I believe in what I do.”

There may be some small tweaks on the field (the U.S. played in more of a 4-2-3-1 last month), and the way things are discussed or communicated will vary simply because Berhalter and Hudson are different people. But Hudson says there’s no compulsion to make his mark or put his stamp on the team. He has too much respect for what Berhalter accomplished—“Gregg did an incredible job,” he says. There’s also a veteran’s belief that if he maintains a supportive and successful environment and shepherds the program in the right way, the people who matter—those who may knock on his door—will recognize it.

“He just wants to work. He loves the game, and sometimes you need to take a step back to go a step forward,” Acosta says. “You always want to have the head coaching role, but I think this time for him, maybe he needed to reset and find himself again, gain that confidence to be where he’s at now.”

The future is unknown, and the scoreboard ultimately will tell a lot of the story. But Hudson’s American roller coaster, from capsizing in Colorado to coaching in Qatar, has only strengthened his connection and affection for this country. He was raised inside a footballing cauldron, the son of a famous player who often was tabloid fodder, and now finds himself charmed by the growth of the game in his birthplace. Even though those stakes have made him a target at times, they elevate the work he’s doing now. It’s all he’s ever wanted.

“I feel how much the game means to people here. I get it. This role, especially, the responsibility … the people I work with, the staff, the players, are desperate—you can see it in their eyes—desperate for this game to keep moving forward. [And] the fans,” he says. “I truly feel the passion and the desire for the game to grow here, and I feel it’s a privilege to be in this spot for this moment in time.”