BJ Callaghan leads Nashville SC transformation | OneFootball

By Charles Boehm

A cult of personality has developed around modern soccer coaches, powered by the aura of icons like Marcelo Bielsa, Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola who have elevated a once-humble job description into something almost mystical – part guru, part professor, part alchemist. Some managers even cultivate a personal brand akin to that of the superstar players they guide on the pitch.

So it’s almost jarring to encounter one with no airs whatsoever, a team player even in the driver’s seat – no book, podcast or tactical marvels to promote, and seemingly no need to convince the world of their expertise.

One like B.J. Callaghan, for example.

Nashville SC’s head coach grew up on the New Jersey Shore. His pinnacle as a player was at Ursinus College, a modest NCAA Division III program in exurban Philadelphia, where he also began his coaching career not long after graduation. He’s spent the overwhelming majority of that time as an assistant. You’re unlikely to spot him attired in anything fancier than a polo shirt or a hoodie along the sidelines on matchdays.

And anyone eager for juicy ‘I am a special one’-type declarations from his half-hour one-on-one conversation with MLSsoccer.com ahead of Nashville's visit to near-neighbors Atlanta United on Saturday afternoon will have to adjust their expectations (2:45 pm ET | MLS Season Pass, Apple TV+; FOX, FOX Deportes).

“I was just a piece to a larger vision of what the club was looking for,” Callaghan said of his work since taking the reins last July.

“It was just me aligning with with the vision of [majority owner] John Ingram, [general manager] Mike Jacobs and [vice chairman] Ian Ayre of where they wanted the club to go.”

Forward progress

Those paying close attention to Nashville’s progress under his leadership would likely give him a good deal more credit than that. A team once associated with defensive solidity above all else has flashed some of the league’s most attractive, aggressive soccer in 2025, along the way racking up the top expected goal differential per 90 minutes in the Eastern Conference (+0.76) according to FBref.com, a figure second only to the league-leading Vancouver Whitecaps.

While the work is very much in progress, both the numbers and the eye test suggest marked advancement from the group that limped to a 13th-place finish over Callaghan’s opening months in charge.

“Taking stock on the first 10 games, there's elements that we're pleased with,” he said. “We're still also a team that's trying to search for consistency in it and kind of just scratching the surface."

A 3W-1L-1D opening to the campaign represents the best start in Nashville’s six-year MLS existence. And though they’ve since let points slip away here and there, last weekend the Coyotes’ good work coalesced into probably the most startling result of the season so far: a 7-2 hammering of Chicago Fire FC at GEODIS Park that showcased some of Callaghan’s touch, and the tantalizing potential it could unlock.

Striker Sam Surridge became the first player in club history to bag four goals in one outing, while his fellow attacker Hany Mukhtar tallied 2g/1a – promising signs from a Designated Player duo who haven’t always lived up to their billing together. At the other end of the spectrum, attack-minded right back Andy Najar, an MLS veteran Nashville brought back from a stint in the Honduran league over the winter, racked up a hat trick of assists, looking like his old self.

Revolving doors

What made the whole thing almost surreal was that the coach on the other side of the rout was Gregg Berhalter, who Callaghan spent half a decade working under with the US men’s national team before taking the Nashville job, much of it serving as Berhalter’s ‘eyes in the sky’ during matches, relaying observations from suite level via an earpiece.

There’s some irony in how it was actually Berhalter’s first departure from the USMNT that opened the door for Callaghan’s next step forward in his career. When Chicago’s current boss stepped away from the program as his contract expired and controversy raged in the aftermath of the 2022 World Cup, it fell first to former assistant Anthony Hudson, and later Callaghan, to man the ship on an interim basis, including an impressively successful defense of the Yanks’ Concacaf Nations League title.

“Having that opportunity to lead the national team at that period of time, I think probably was that push that you need to know that you're ready. I feel a tremendous amount of gratitude – I was in the safest environment that you could step into, being a head coach, because I had worked with all of those people,” Callaghan said.

“You need someone to take a risk on you. You need someone to take a chance. And I'm grateful that it was Nashville, with John Ingram and Mike Jacobs, who saw the potential in me and gave me the opportunity.”

Player of the Matchday 10: Sam Surridge

Conventional wisdom would label him as a member of Berhalter’s ‘coaching tree’ given their extensive time together, and they do indeed share some common concepts. Yet Callaghan’s journey to this point underlines the limitations of that term.

He spent even longer on Jim Curtin’s staff with the Philadelphia Union, where a much more direct, press-oriented philosophy than Berhalter’s took root following the arrival of sporting director Ernst Tanner, and can call on a lifetime’s worth of lessons from his years in the Union academy, at Philly-area colleges St. Joseph’s and Villanova, and maybe even a few tidbits from his grandfather Jack Kraft, a longtime coach of Villanova’s famed basketball team in the 1960s and ‘70s.

One common thread: He won over colleagues at every stop with his character and spirit.

“Being somebody that worked with and for B.J., I don’t think you’d be able to find a staff member or player that didn’t have respect for him, based on the way he goes about his job, how hard he works and his commitment to the team,” former USMNT scout Michael Stephens, who now runs Chicago’s recruitment department for Berhalter, told The Athletic two years ago.

“He did so many different tasks and he did them well, everything from player scouting to opposition analysis. He was somebody that all the rest of the staff could count on to do good work.”

Coaching influences

Callaghan takes care to note that the environments he’s worked in have influenced him just as much as the individuals he’s worked with. Both his Union and USMNT staffs have turned out to be cradles for future MLS coaches.

“When I was with Jim, I had the opportunity to spend time with Pat Noonan on the same staff. Then when I was with the national team, I had the moment to spend time with Josh Wolff, Nico Estévez, Luchi Gonzalez and now Mikey Varas,” he recalled. “People talk about the coaching tree, because there's always somebody at the top, and I would not be where I'm at now without the influence of Jim and Gregg. But I feel a ton of pride in the opportunity that I also spent with like, five other guys who currently or recently have been MLS coaches, and really to spend time in the trenches with those guys. Though I guess it's more than a tree for us.

“The best way I could say it is, I've stolen pieces from all of them,” Callaghan added. “The game has been played for 200 years, so you take the pieces that fit who you are … I believe that the way your teams play is a way of a reflection of who you are.”

That helps explain his Nashville project. The Coyotes press, but aren’t exactly a heavy-metal outfit. They can push the throttle, yet aren’t quite run-and-gun at heart. They prize combination play and the fluid relationships that enable it, but don’t go full tiki-taka per se, seeking to build a new, more assertive tactical identity without tossing aside the sturdy defensive foundation built by Callaghan’s predecessor Gary Smith.

Everything has a practical purpose. That doesn’t mean it can’t be executed with elegance.

“What we talk about here all the time [is that] everyone has to attack and everyone defends. And the reason we say that? Because through all of the phases of play, we're trying to find ways to create goalscoring chances. That is our main focus,” Callaghan explained.

“So if we're high pressing, we're trying to find goalscoring chances. If we're defending corner kicks, we want to figure out ways that when we do that well, is there an opportunity to create a goalscoring chance off of the defending a corner, and everything in between? And that's, I would say, really important to what we're trying to do.”

Youth focus

In the bigger picture, his priorities at Nashville run some measure deeper than just the first team. One of the factors in his hiring was the club’s desire to ramp up a more effective player development system, with the goal of coaxing more production out of a fledgling academy that literally started from scratch when Nashville joined MLS, while also freshening up an aging roster with the aid of their MLS NEXT Pro side in Huntsville, Alabama, one of that league’s model organizations.

“The club as a whole is currently going through this transition,” said Callaghan. “We basically have a saying that your role is different, but your status is the same … Whether it's the DP or the draft pick or the homegrown, everybody was going to be committed and aligned behind the same mission, the same vision and the same values.”

Blending best practices from the Union, FC Dallas and other leaders in the space, Nashville based their youth sides at Currey Ingram Academy, a boarding school in Brentwood, Tennessee, offering a residential program for recruits from outside the region in addition to local prospects working to advance down the pathway to a professional career.

“You can maybe say, in a historical sense, that Tennessee doesn't produce as many players as Southern California or something like that. But the greater Nashville area has gone under such a transformation in, let's say, the last 10 years, that I don't actually believe historical contexts matter anymore, because of the population boom and just everything of what Nashville is,” said Callaghan.

“I still think it's an area for growth for us, and we brought Darren Powell in to be an academy director, someone who’s got a tremendous experience. So we're really excited about that. And we have a really good infrastructure with our second team in Huntsville, which is almost like a glue between the two properties in the pathway.”

Long view

Progress has been painstaking, though the rise of young center back Chris Applewhite, a teenager from Maryland who became the youngest player in club history when he made his MLS debut last month, hints at what’s possible.

“Chris is sort of our proof of concept,” said Callaghan. “A player that had the opportunity to come to the academy, play the full season, plus at Huntsville, is able to sign homegrown and has now made his debut and started to earn himself some playing time. A guy who's mature beyond his years, in the way that he studies the game, the way that he takes feedback and applies it, even the way that he plays: calm on the ball, very deliberate with his passing, passes with purpose and intent.

“There's certainly areas that he needs to develop. But being 17 years old, I think he's got a really bright future.”

In the long run, stories like that may prove almost as central to Callaghan’s legacy as first-team results. But first, he’s got players to nurture and games to win, starting on Saturday afternoon in Atlanta.

“I talk to our guys, I talk to anybody, about just staying humble and hungry,” he said. “That's a motto that I live by.”