“There’s Something Inside Me That Will Never Give Up”: Anthony Hudson on Coaching Through Adversity

Anthony Hudson (Photo by Chris Coduto/Getty Images)

Anthony Hudson was 27 years old when he became the youngest professional football manager in the United States. He was 35 when he guided New Zealand to glory in the OFC Nations Cup, Oceania’s quadrennial international football tournament. He was 39 when he was appointed manager of the United States national team. Now 44, he finds himself at a crossroads in his coaching career.

One month ago, Hudson was dismissed from his duties by Thai side BG Pathum United. He has remained in Bangkok ever since, fielding calls from various teams and carefully plotting his next move.

“When I got the call that I was being let go, it came as a shock to everyone—myself, the players, the fans, the club staff,” recalls Hudson in an exclusive RG interview. “This was an incredible, receptive group of men who were great to work with and played with a lot of passion. We had an immediate impact, but the club decided they wanted someone who would be a better fit for their model of work. I walk away sad but incredibly proud of the work we did, and I’m desperate to get back to work and be on the training pitch.”

Failing to Escape Father’s Shadow

Anthony is the son of ex-England international Alan Hudson, who won the 1971 UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup with Chelsea and reached the 1978 FA Cup Final with Arsenal, and whose stellar displays for Stoke City earned him a spot in the PFA Team of the First Division in 1975 and 1976. He was born in Seattle whilst his father was plying his trade for Seattle Sounders, but he would move back to England shortly after and split his adolescence between Stoke and London. Hudson honed his footballing skills at West Ham’s academy before being loaned out to Luton Town and eventually released in 2001, after which Dutch side NEC Nijmegen signed him on a two-year deal. However, he never managed to escape his father’s shadow as a footballer—six months after making the move to the Netherlands, Hudson asked to be released and returned home.

“My head was the biggest stumbling block for me. I didn’t have the toolkit to overcome my situation, where everywhere you go, people talk about how good your old man was, they’d compare you to your dad, they’ll say you’ll never be as good as him. It plagued me as a young kid because I could never find confidence. I always wanted a coach to pull me aside and ask me, ‘How are you doing?’ I was never asked those questions by anyone. I always wanted to talk about it, and I never could. 

Back then, you couldn’t show any type of weakness. As a young player, it got to the point where I just didn’t enjoy playing.”

Hudson’s parents divorced at an early age, and the few times that he did see his father, he’d often be at the nightclub that he owned, imbibing a vodka martini and hobnobbing with other big-name footballers or rock stars like Elton John and Keith Moon. So it should come as little surprise that, whilst Anthony failed to replicate Alan’s footballing stardom, he did inherit his issues with alcoholism. Desperate to cope with the regret of not making it as a footballer, he began to drink away his sorrows until finally seeking out help from Alcoholics Anonymous and quitting in 2005. He’s stayed sober for the past two decades and has even volunteered in prisons and hospitals across the USA, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand, helping other addicts put an end to their drinking problems.

By the time he was in his early 20s, Hudson knew that his future was in coaching, not playing. It’s why he decided to start collecting his coaching badges with Leyton Orient’s academy before commencing a new journey in the United States, where he worked as an academy coach for New Jersey-based AC Diablos SC and a player-assistant coach for North Carolina-based Wilmington Hammerheads. During the offseason, Hudson would fly across the Atlantic, rent a car, and travel across Europe, where he’d witness training sessions upfront from the best teams in the world and seek out advice from legendary coaches like Sir Alex Ferguson and Marcelo Bielsa.

“Early on, I had a belief that I could be a manager and felt that it would be very tough at my age to get a manager’s job in England. I got an opportunity to work with senior players in the USA as a player-coach and get a better living situation in terms of money…the playing side was a means to an end to ensure I got extra money but also that I got enough hours on the training pitch and getting my hours in and becoming the best coach I could be.”

“A big part of me going to America was that I no longer wanted to be seen as Alan Hudson’s son, I just wanted to be my own man. My dad was my hero growing up, he loved living in America, which always stuck with me, and I felt it was an opportunity to get away and make a name for myself. When I moved to the States, I had spent the past year realizing that my dream of becoming a player had failed, and that failure became such a huge driver for me to become a coach. I made a promise to myself that I’m not going to let anything get in the way of this thing I love.”

Making His Mark as a Manager

On October 28, 2008, Hudson took charge of Real Maryland Monarchs, who had only just launched operations the previous year, and became the youngest head coach in the USA. Due to their lack of finances and training facilities, Hudson’s players grew accustomed to getting kicked off pitches in the middle of practice and driving to another field to finish the session. In his second season at the helm, he’d wake up at 5 a.m. and set up cones in the frigid night before holding practice at Rockville High School between 6 and 7:30, whilst their matches took place at Richard Montgomery High School.

“As a young coach, you’re always looking over your shoulder and filled with a lot of insecurity, because you don’t get very long. I remember being interviewed by a few teams, and the feedback I got was, ‘He’s too young to be a head coach,’ and I just didn’t believe that. In my first preseason in Maryland, the weather was horrendous, and I got walking pneumonia. I was the sickest I’ve ever been, and there’d be moments where the team would be off in one corner and I’d be down the other end, coughing in a bad way. But I didn’t want to give the owners or anyone else an excuse to say, ‘He’s too young, he can’t handle it.’”

In his first season as a manager, he took the Monarchs (who had finished bottom in 2008) to fifth place and their first-ever postseason finish, prompting him to be nominated for the USL Second Division 2009 Coach of the Year Award. Hudson returned to the UK in 2010, working with Tottenham Hotspur’s reserves before taking the reins of fifth-tier Newport County in April 2011. However, he would last just five months in charge before being dismissed.

Eventually, his intuition paid off. One day, before a match against Gillingham, Bahrain manager Peter Taylor walked into Still’s office. Whilst Still left to address his team, Taylor and Hudson started chatting about their different managerial paths. A few days later, he received a phone call from Taylor, who offered him the managerial role for Bahrain’s U-23s – Hudson would go on to lead them to their first-ever gold medal in the 2013 GCC U-23 Championship, whilst he eventually took charge of the senior team and guided them to a third-place finish in the 2013 WAFF Championship.

After two years in the Middle East, Hudson was given a wide-ranging position which saw him oversee the New Zealand senior team and their U-20 and U-17 sides. Under Hudson’s leadership, New Zealand made history by qualifying for the knockout rounds of the U-17 and U-20 World Cup in the same year. At the senior level, the All Whites won the 2016 OFC Nations Cup and qualified for the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup, whilst they came within inches of booking their ticket to the 2018 FIFA World Cup only to lose to Peru in the intercontinental playoff. He then returned to the States in November 2017, taking charge of Colorado Rapids. However, he failed to translate his success to Major League Soccer and was relieved of his duties in May 2019 after a record of 8 wins, 26 draws, and 9 defeats.

“I came from an environment in New Zealand, where it was very cut and dry: ‘This is what’s expected, if you don’t do it, you won’t be in the squad,’ and then going to Colorado. I probably took a lot of that demand instead of adapting a little bit. Going to Colorado, I really persisted with a way of playing… unless you have the time to execute and bring players in, it’s irrelevant. You have to get results early, you have to find a way to win with what you’ve got early on, and I think I was in a sort of a false sense that I would have the time to be able to do that, but you quickly realize you don’t, and that was a big lesson for me.”

Helping Dogs Find a Safe Haven

If there’s one thing that Anthony loves as much as football, it’s dogs. In May 2019, he founded the Forgotten Dogs Foundation, which helps homeless dogs find a safe haven via collaborations with community shelters and animal rescue programs across the USA. Enlisting former Tottenham coach Harry Redknapp and USWNT players Rose Lavelle and Jane Campbell to the nonprofit’s board, the foundation has organized soccer clinics and tournaments to raise money for their efforts to find new homes for stray dogs. They’ve also worked with inmates in Cook County, Ill. to help increase troubled shelter dogs’ chances of adoption, collaborated with MLS and NWSL teams to find forever homes for dogs, and joined forces with homeless facilities in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago to help provide essential resources for rough sleepers and their canines.

“I’m just a dog person, always have been, always will be. One day I’m going to retire with a house with loads of dogs and a ton of land.

My two dogs have been everywhere with me from Bahrain to New Zealand to America to Qatar to Thailand…they’re a big part of my life. Traveling with dogs is stressful because you want to make sure they’re doing okay on the flights, and then whenever you land a new managerial job, you’ll be setting up everything for the dog walkers and house sitters. I’ve only been here for four months in Thailand, I don’t think I can move again so quickly…my preference would be to stay here. I’ve enjoyed my time here.”

In January 2021, Hudson was hired as an assistant to USMNT manager Gregg Berhalter. Over the next few months, the Stars and Stripes would defeat Mexico in the Concacaf Nations League Final and the Concacaf Gold Cup Final and qualify for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. He was forced to leave his two Rhodesian Ridgebacks at home as he departed for Qatar and experienced the biggest tournament in sport, with the USA making it all the way to the Round of 16 before losing to the Netherlands. Hudson was given the interim manager role following Berhalter’s departure, kicking off his spell with a 2-1 friendly defeat to Serbia before beating Grenada and El Salvador in the Concacaf Nations League and drawing 1-1 in a friendly vs. Mexico. However, after just four months in charge of the United States national team, Hudson decided to abdicate his position and make the move to Qatar.

Hudson spent three matches in charge of Al-Markiyah SC before moving into a technical advisory role. He then presided over five wins, two draws, and four defeats with fellow Qatari side Al-Arabi before being given the axe. Less than two months later, Hudson had snapped up a new job with BG Pathum. When Hudson took charge on February 3, the Rabbits sat seventh in Thailand’s top flight; he guided them to third in the table with eight victories, three stalemates, and two defeats before being let go.

Over the past 17 years, Anthony Hudson has built up a reputation as a globe-trotting manager, bouncing around from six different countries and three different continents. And today, he’s hungry for the next step of his peripatetic journey—whether that’s with a fourth national team, a seventh club team, or a different role entirely.

“I’ve always been very detailed, very organized with lots of videos and information in my training sessions, and there have been periods of my coaching career where I’ve been obsessed with a style of play and I’ve tried to build a team around it and persist with that belief even if it’s not working. Obviously, you don’t get time to do that, the most important thing is finding the way to get the most out of your players’ individual qualities and set them up for success. I’m all in with whatever I do, and I’ve never felt better as a manager. There’s something inside me that will never, ever give up…I don’t think I’ll ever stop until I’m dead. I’m excited for the next step, whatever that may be.”