A big hire in Brooklyn as legendary United States men’s national team striker Brian McBride is now general manager of both the Brooklyn FC men’s and women’s teams.
Tom Bogert of The Athletic first reported McBride’s hiring and spoke exclusively to the new top soccer executive, who said “…the amount of impact I can have, not just on the sporting side, but on the organization” is what most drew him to this Brooklyn FC job.
McBride’s most pressing task is hiring a coach for and building the Brooklyn men’s team – which appears to still be coming as soon as March 2026 when the next USL Championship season kicks off, despite to date having no staff hired and no players signed.
A 2026 men’s launch at Maimonides Park in Coney Island was the plan the club announced in December 2024, but there’d been little men’s team movement since, leading to questions around if that planned 2026 debut would happen. Those questions disappear with McBride’s arrival and the promise of movement on roster building for the USL Championship.
The women’s USL Super League team did debut in 2024, though didn’t play in Brooklyn at Maimonides Park until March 2025. They missed the playoffs last season despite being six points clear at the top of the table at the league’s midseason break, and as of this writing have one win in nine matches played so far in 2025-26 under new coach Tomás Tengarrinha, sitting next-to-last in 8th Place in the Super League table.
Tyrese Alleyne-Davis
The sporting decisions in Brooklyn, prior to McBride’s arrival, were handled by Kevin Tenjo, who was named Sporting Director of the men’s and women’s teams in December 2024. Tenjo, a former New York Cosmos goalkeeper turned scout and talent ID specialist, actually ended the 2024-25 Super League season serving double duty as Brooklyn’s interim head coach after the club dismissed Jessica Silva with five matches left in that turbulent season.
Tenjo will remain in the Brooklyn front office even as McBride arrives, with president of Brooklyn FC, David Barry, telling Hudson River Blue in a statement, “Kevin remains a vital member of our sporting leadership. He will work closely with Brian McBride as we continue to build the women’s team for the 2025/26 season and build out the men’s team, contributing to roster and staff planning and related operations.”
McBride, originally from Arlington Heights, Illinois, is a US Soccer Hall of Famer who played six seasons in the English Premier League, 11 in Major League Soccer, and made 95 appearances, including at three World Cups, for the USMNT.
He comes to Brooklyn not long after he spent three years as general manager of the USMNT from January 2020 until his dismissal in January 2023, working under another fellow ex-USMNT player, Earnie Stewart, while Stewart was the sporting director of US Soccer.
The pair of McBride and Stewart were in the middle of the petty and at times ugly Gio Reyna/Gregg Berhalter/Claudio Reyna drama that unfolded during and after the 2022 FIFA World Cup, leading to investigations and recriminations along with lots of leadership changes on the side of the USMNT.
This will be McBride’s first role since the end of his time with the national team and his first chance to build teams at the club level. It’s a high-profile addition by Brooklyn and the strongest sign yet that we’ll be seeing them in the USL Championship next season, and now it’s up to Brian McBride to decide what kind of Brooklyn team shows up next March.
