Louisville City just announced that John Hackworth would become the club’s second head coach and first (official) sporting director. Hackworth previously coached US Soccer’s U17 team and was an assistant under both Bruce Arena and Dave Sarachan with the senior national team. Previously, he coached at Philadelphia Union from 2012-2014, going 20-23-14 in that span. Not a fantastic record, but there aren’t many/any coaches that have had success at Philly, so we’ll let it slide for now.
The club’s press release says Hackworth won’t begin duties here in Louisville until August 13, as he’s in the middle of finishing up a camp with the USMNT U17s in Costa Rica right now. That means we’ve got one more week of the Triumvirate at the helm. The entire team really deserves our respect, applause, and admiration for the job they’ve done and are still doing during this coaching vacancy. I wrote over a month ago that I saw bad things coming around the bend if a new manager wasn’t named in a week or two, and these guys have gone above and far beyond expectations. Luke Spencer, Paolo DelPiccolo, and George Davis IV have done a great job leading their teammates during this period, and their ability to manage their teammates and the schedule is admirable. Our collective hats are off to them, and we wish them the best of luck with their final two games in charge.
More recently at the U17s, Hackworth got to coach Christian Pulisic, Tim Weah, Jack Sargent, Andrew Carleton, Cameron Carter-Vickers, and Weston McKinnie, all very, very good players. And he had some pretty good results, making the quarterfinals of last year’s U17 World Cup and playing some really exciting soccer.
What’s even more important about that experience for Louisville City is he’s got scouting knowledge of a lot of up and coming American youth players. Not everyone on that U17 team will play in Europe or Mexico or MLS, to say nothing of the other kids Hackworth probably had his eye on while running the program. To add an exclamation point onto that, he also oversaw the entire US Soccer Development Academy while with USSF. One can argue whether USSDA has been good or bad for club soccer in the US, but most of the best youth players in the country are involved in that setup.
It’s a little interesting to note he’s being tabbed as sporting director as well. James O’Connor ostensibly held that position in fact, even though it didn’t previously exist. Those kinds of titles are kind of meaningless when all you’re talking about is a professional roster, but if there’s also an academy, it makes more sense. Club president Brad Estes indicated recently in a radio interview that an academy is definitely in the club’s future plans. Giving the manager control over that makes some sense. I am interested to see, however, how the sporting side of things gets staffed, if only so the club can prevent the kind of vacuum of institutional knowledge that happened when O’Connor left. One thing is certain, we can trust that Hackworth knows what he’s doing on the development side of things.
Hackworth has a USSF Pro license and a UEFA Pro license. He’s got a lot of experience. He’s eminently qualified. I kind of can’t believe he took this job. The contract is through 2020. This is a very good hire, in my view. We should be excited. We should lose the #HackCity hashtag, because it’s bad, but we should be excited. Welcome to Louisville, John Hackworth!
