How one coach predicted B.J. Callaghan's rise to Nashville SC top job was inevitable

Not long ago, Jim Curtin caught up with an old friend.

Curtin, the coach of the Philadelphia Union, had dinner with B.J. Callaghan, who was his assistant from 2014 to 2018. They exchanged a few ideas, words of advice and talked about "the old days and times" over a meal and beer. There was plenty to celebrate — Callaghan had recently been named the coach of Nashville SC — but hiding under Curtin's pride for his former colleague was a tiny bit of dread.

"Part of me gets upset," Curtin said. "Because I now know Nashville will be one of the most dangerous teams in the East."

Curtin raved about Callaghan — "the type of person who will never be outworked" — when speaking to reporters before the Union faced Nashville on July 20. Villanova men's soccer coach Tom Carlin, who coached with Callaghan from 2008 to 2012, had similar things to say about his former assistant who's set to make his professional Nashville debut Wednesday when NSC hosts Mazatlán in the Leagues Cup group stage.

It will be the first permanent head coaching gig at the professional level for Callaghan. But Carlin, for one, knows it's long been coming.

When Carlin arrived at Villanova in 2007, he met Callaghan, then an assistant with the women's team. Carlin was promoted from assistant to head men's coach a year later. Bringing Callaghan with him was an immediate decision.

"Right away, I knew he was big-time," Carlin told The Tennessean.

Callaghan, who played goalkeeper at Division III Ursinus College from 1999 to 2002, began under Carlin as the Wildcats' goalkeeper coach and ended his tenure there as a "glorified head coach." As Carlin's associate head coach, he had a hand in every part of the program, running practice sessions, scouting and working in off-field operations.

Callaghan worked at Villanova in an era when advanced performance metrics were just starting to make headway in soccer. With the option to retreat to a conservative approach toward new technology, or become overwhelmed by the trove of data at his disposal — "there was just so many options," Carlin said — Callaghan did neither. He embraced heart-rate monitors and game-tape software and synthesized observations from them into a coherent system.

"He was cutting-edge," Carlin said. " . . . Even in the days before analytics was even a thing, he always knew how much technology could help us with helping our players get better."

Callaghan, the grandson of former Villanova men's basketball coach Jack Kraft, seemed destined to become a head coach. He left Villanova to join the Union in 2013, beginning with the club's youth academy, and experienced a similar rise under Curtin before joining the United States men's national team as an assistant and strategy analyst in 2019.

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In Callaghan's final season at Villanova, the Wildcats set a program record for wins. While he was with Philadelphia, the Union reached two U.S. Open Cup finals. The USMNT made the round of 16 at the 2022 FIFA World Cup and won the 2023 CONCACAF Nations League championship, with Callaghan serving as interim coach before Gregg Berhalter's rehiring.

"You saw his leadership skills with the U.S. national team when he took control of that and did nothing but win," Curtin said. " . . . I think Nashville made a perfect decision. A top leader, a top coach, whether you talk about tactical, work ethic, speaking in front of the group motivating athletes. Whatever box you need to check, B.J. Callaghan checks all of them."

Watching the U.S. last summer, Carlin saw plenty of the Callaghan he had worked with a decade earlier. From his perspective, Callaghan kept things simple — "who are my best guys, and let's play them in the best formation we can" — and was able to block out "all the noise, all the stuff that was going on."

Those traits help explain why Callaghan's coaching has carried over through three distinct levels — college, professional and international.

"B.J. was always in the business of figuring it out," Carlin said. "He was just a guy who got stuff done. . . . He's in the business of figuring out how to serve the team, serve the program, whatever it is to make it great every day. He's one of the loyal guys I know. Extremely down to earth. Sprinkle in some work ethic, just a good formula."

Jacob Shames can be reached by email at jshames@gannett.com and on Twitter @Jacob_Shames.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: How one coach predicted B.J. Callaghan's rise to Nashville SC top job was inevitable