Bob Bradley has a new four-year contract to coach the U.S. men’s soccer team.

We’ll learn more at noon ET on Tuesday when Bradley and U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati conduct a teleconference in New York City, but here are my three quick thoughts on U.S. Soccer’s decision to extend Bradley’s contract:

• This is something of a surprise. It was always possible that Bradley would return for another World Cup cycle after leading the U.S. to a second-round performance in the recent World Cup in South Africa. But the consensus among U.S. players (including Landon Donovan) and among insiders connected to the team was that Bradley would probably get a nice handshake for meeting (but not exceeding) pre-World Cup expectations and then move on to another coaching gig. The U.S. hasn’t had a foreign coach since 1995, and it seemed as though Gulati might finally land the California-based German Juergen Klinsmann. If Gulati did meet with Klinsmann, as recent reports had indicated, it sounds like Klinsmann either wasn’t interested or (as in 2006) wanted more control than U.S. Soccer was willing to give him.

• There may be conditions attached to Bradley’s staff choices. I’ll be curious to see if Bradley ends up keeping all of his assistants. There was a sense that things got stale toward the end of Bruce Arena’s eight years as the U.S. coach, and Gulati may want there to be some fresh eyes on Bradley’s staff. The last time a U.S. coach was retained after a World Cup was a different situation: Arena had reached the 2002 quarterfinals and was being celebrated as some sort of motivational genius. Though the U.S. did win Group C ahead of England in 2010, Bradley went out in the second round, a 2-1 loss to Ghana that was a winnable game for the United States. Keep in mind, too, that Gulati waited 65 days after the U.S.’s World Cup exit to give Bradley an extension. (By contrast, he waited a couple hours to offer an extension to U.S. women’s coach Pia Sundhage—even getting down on one knee to do so at a team party in Beijing—after her team had won the Olympic gold medal.)

• Gulati is committed to the idea that coaches with knowledge of American soccer have a built-in advantage coaching American soccer players. Bradley and Klinsmann (who has lived in California for more than a decade) appear to have been the only two serious candidates. Gulati has spoken at length over the years about his belief that American soccer players are different from their overseas counterparts and respond better to coaches with knowledge of the American system. Not every U.S. fan will agree with that, and it’s true that anyone who follows U.S. soccer has to be curious about what would happen if one of the world’s most famous soccer coaches—say, Guus Hiddink or José Mourinho—took over the U.S. national team. But that won’t be happening anytime soon now. Gulati has chosen Bradley. Do you think he made the right call?

U.S. national team coach Bob Bradley met with U.S. Soccer honchos on Thursday to discuss Bradley’s future. (His contract runs through the end of December.) No decision appears to have been made, however, which means “Bradley Saga 2010” is now on Day 62 since the end of the U.S.’s World Cup run.

If you read my latest Planet Fútbol column on Wednesday you saw that my task this week was to examine the history of coaches who led the same national team at consecutive World Cups. Is there something to the idea that national-team programs can get stale if the same coach sticks around for two World Cup cycles?

The recent history isn’t exactly glowing: The two coaches who led the same teams at World Cups ’06 and ’10—Italy’s Marcello Lippi and France’s Raymond Domenech—both flopped in South Africa, and the U.S.’s lone repeater (Bruce Arena) went out in the first round in Germany ’06. From 1994 on, only one of the 12 coaches who repeated has done better the second time around (Norway’s Egil Olsen in ’98).

The results of my survey: Of the 49 coaches who have repeated in the history of the World Cup, 24 fared worse the second time, 13 fared better and 12 went out in the same round. (I failed to include Sweden’s Lars Lagerbäck in my previous analysis and have now added him.)

But as some readers pointed out, simply measuring results by “better” or “worse” the second time around was probably unfair to some coaches. Argentina’s Carlos Bilardo won World Cup ’86 and reached the final in ’90, so it’s hard to call him a failure. So I decided to run the numbers again on World Cup “second acts,” only now I measured how a coach’s second act compared to the average finish of that country in the history of the World Cup. (If you went out in the first round you got 1 point, 2 for going out in the second round, and so on, until the World Cup winner got 6 points.)

If a coach finished within .25 points of that country’s average in his second term, I considered that to be the “same” performance, not “better” or “worse.”

The results of this survey were a bit more favorable to second-term World Cup coaches. Of the 49 repeaters with the same country, 22 fared worse than the national norm, 18 fared better and 9 fared the same. (Recent results were still pretty poor, though: Only 2 of the 12 repeaters from 1994 on have fared better than their national norm: Norway’s Olsen and Romania’s Anghel Iordanescu in ’98.)

Of course, this way of measuring success has its own caveats. If Bradley were to return for 2014 and have the U.S. go out in the second round again, he would be considered to have performed better than the U.S. World Cup average finish (1.778 per my method above). Would U.S. fans consider that to be a satisfactory finish? Should I just get a life and stop analyzing this stuff? (On second thought, don’t answer that.)

WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND

Not a complete listing, but here’s the best of the games on TV in America this weekend:

FRIDAY

• Kaiserslautern-Bayern Munich (Germany), 2:30 p.m. ET, GolTV

• Inter Milan-Atlético Madrid (UEFA Super Cup), 2:45 p.m. ET, FSC

SATURDAY

• Blackburn Rovers-Arsenal (England), 7:30 a.m. ET, ESPN2

• Chelsea-Stoke City (England), 10 a.m. ET, FSC-Plus

• Schalke-Hanover (Germany), noon ET, ESPN Deportes, ESPN3.com

• Manchester United-West Ham (England), 12:30 p.m. ET, FSC

• Columbus-Dallas (MLS), 4 p.m. ET, TeleFutura

• Internacional-Botafogo (Brazil), 5:30 p.m. ET, GolTV

• Toronto-Salt Lake (MLS), 7 p.m. ET, MLS Direct Kick

• Chivas de Guadalajara-Pumas (Mexico), 8 p.m. ET, Telemundo

• Seattle-Chicago (MLS), 10:30 p.m. ET, MLS Direct Kick

SUNDAY

• Bolton Wanderers-Birmingham City (England), 8:30 a.m. ET, FSC-Plus

• Aston Villa-Everton (England), 11 a.m. ET, FSC

• Racing Santander-Barcelona (Spain), 1 p.m. ET, ESPN Deportes, ESPN3.com

• AC Milan-Lecce (Italy), 2:30 p.m. ET, FSC

• Mallorca-Real Madrid (Spain), 3 p.m. ET, GolTV

• Bordeaux-Marseille (France), 3 p.m. ET, FSC-Plus

• América-Necaxa (Mexico), 5 p.m. ET, Univisión

• Chivas USA-D.C. United (MLS), 10 p.m., ESPN2

U.S. coach Bob Bradley's future is unclear, but progression from the group stage for the U.S. is a must. (Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

What will U.S. coach Bob Bradley do after the upcoming World Cup?

It has been more than three years since Bradley got the job, which followed Jürgen Klinsmann’s decision to leave the U.S. at the altar in December 2006. (Check out my one-on-one chat with Klinsmann) How has Bradley done? When he’s had his first-team players the U.S. has performed well, winning the 2007 Gold Cup and CONCACAF World Cup qualifying tournament and finishing second at the ’09 Confederations Cup.

When Bradley hasn’t had his A roster (’07 Copa América, ’09 Gold Cup), the results have been far less impressive.

But as Bradley’s boss, U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati, reiterated last week, Bradley’s chances of remaining the U.S. coach in the years ahead will depend entirely on how the U.S. performs in South Africa.

What would it take for U.S. Soccer to retain Bradley? Gulati wasn’t saying. But I would argue that for Bradley to stay the U.S. has to at least get out of the first round and might even have to exceed expectations and reach the quarterfinals. Eight years is a long time for a national-team coach to stay in power, and I think Gulati realized that eight-year coach Bruce Arena (for all his success in ‘02) might have been in charge for too long by the time the ’06 World Cup rolled around.

Then there’s the Klinsmann dimension. Based on my Q&A with Klinsmann, I think he would still be interested in the U.S. job at some point, and hiring Klinsmann might be a way for Gulati to erase the one significant misfire of his presidential tenure, his inability to land Klinsmann the first time around. Then again, Gulati might not want Klinsmann as much as he did in 2006. After all, Klinsi’s coaching reputation these days (after his aborted stay at Bayern Munich) isn’t what it was in ’06 (when he’d just led Germany to the World Cup semis).

Could Bradley get another contract to lead the U.S. if the Americans went out in the second round in South Africa? Perhaps, but I think it would have to be an honorable exit in which the U.S. played well in defeat. If Bradley doesn’t continue as the U.S. coach, I could envision him going to a club in Europe–even one that might not be all that high-profile a job. Part of Bradley’s family is already in Europe (his son, Michael), and Bradley himself is much more of a European-style coach than Arena ever has been. You could also be certain that Bradley would get offers from MLS teams.

What do you think lies in Bob Bradley’s future after this World Cup?

England announced its 23-man World Cup roster on Tuesday, and the surprise cuts of Theo Walcott and Adam Johnson were hardly bad news from the perspective of the United States, which meets England in its World Cup opener on June 12.

Walcott didn’t have a good season for Arsenal, but his speed on the wing figured to cause problems for the U.S., even if he would only have come on in a substitute’s role. U.S. right back Jonathan Spector was exposed several times by Turkey’s speedy Arda Turan on Saturday, and the Americans are lacking in speed across the entire back line. Johnson, meanwhile, has been in good form for Manchester City and had an even better case for inclusion than Walcott.

Not that England will be without pace on June 12. Tottenham’s Aaron Lennon figures to start on the right side of the English midfield, where he could pose problems for U.S. left back Carlos Bocanegra. That leaves U.S. coach Bob Bradley with a tough call to make: Does he go reactive and play Landon Donovan at left midfield, where he’s a better track-back defender than Clint Dempsey? Or does he get more attack-minded and put Donovan on the right, where he’d have the chance to outplay Ashley Cole for the second time this year?

Here are the lineups I currently expect to see for USA-England (assuming that Gareth Barry recovers in time,  otherwise expect to see Steven Gerrard paired in central midfield with Frank Lampard):

USA: Tim Howard; Steve Cherundolo, Oguchi Onyewu, Jay DeMerit, Carlos Bocanegra; Landon Donovan, Michael Bradley, Maurice Edu, Clint Dempsey; Jozy Altidore, Robbie Findley.

England: David James; Glen Johnson, Rio Ferdinand, John Terry, Ashley Cole; Aaron Lennon, Frank Lampard, Gareth Barry, Steven Gerrard; Wayne Rooney, Emile Heskey.

Are those the lineups you’re expecting? What did you think of Fabio Capello’s final cuts?

Defender Oguchi Onyewu will try to shake off the rust that was evident in his performance against the Czechs. (Victor Decolongon/Getty Images)

PHILADELPHIA — Five things to watch for in the U.S.’s final domestic tune-up before the World Cup, a friendly at Lincoln Financial Field against Turkey on Saturday (ESPN2, Galavisión, 2 p.m. ET):

• Will Oguchi Onyewu be as rusty as he looked against the Czechs? Granted, it was Onyewu’s first competitive game in seven months, but it was a scary sight for U.S. fans when Tomas Sivok (who’s four inches shorter than Onyewu) leaped above the rooted 6’4” American to head home the first Czech goal. One of Onyewu’s strengths during last year’s Confederations Cup was his ability to clear aerial threats from the U.S. box, and he has to show U.S. coach Bob Bradley that he can still get in the right positions and trust his repaired left knee enough to leap into the air for headers. Onyewu did look fine on the ball on Tuesday, but time is running out to prove he’s 100% with England and Wayne Rooney looming on June 12 in South Africa.

• Who will start up top for the U.S. next to Jozy Altidore? I expect to see all the U.S. first-teamers in this game, and the options for the second forward position are wide open in the absence of Charlie Davies. If it was my choice, I’d move Clint Dempsey from right midfield up top and insert Stuart Holden on the right flank. But considering that Bradley picked three forwards besides Altidore for his World Cup roster, he might try auditioning Edson Buddle and/or Herculez Gómez in that spot to see how the newbies interact with Altidore in a game situation. I could even see Buddle getting one half and Gómez getting the other. Another possibility is using Altidore as a lone striker, although Bradley has said repeatedly that his team plays better with a two-man front line.

• Will Turkey be firing on all cylinders for new coach Guus Hiddink? Unlike the Czechs, who were missing eight first-teamers, Turkey has brought most of its best players. They will no doubt be looking to impress superstar coach Hiddink, who takes over permanently on August 1 but will be in Philadelphia to watch the game. Several of these Turkish players starred on the highly entertaining team that reached the Euro 2008 semifinals, including Nihat Kahveci, Arda Turan, Emre Belozoglu, Semih Senturk and Kazim Kazim. They may not have qualified for the World Cup, but they’ll still be a major challenge for the Americans.

• Can Michael Bradley and his central midfield partner be effective two-way players? I’m expecting that Maurice Edu will get the start alongside Bradley, but it’s possible that we could see Ricardo Clark in that spot. Whoever the pairing ends up being, keep an eye on its ability not just to disrupt Turkey’s attacks but to switch into offensive mode quickly after winning the ball and string together some passes. The U.S.’s creative spark comes from Landon Donovan and Clint Dempsey on the midfield flanks, but to be effective they’ll have to rely on Bradley and Edu/Clark to give them the ball in good positions on the half-turn (Dempsey) and on the run (Donovan).

• Can the U.S. avoid costly injuries so close to the World Cup? When I spoke to England coach Fabio Capello in March, he told me that it was important for England’s pre-World Cup friendlies to take place against teams (Mexico and Japan) that were also competing in the World Cup, since everyone would be looking to avoid injuries right before the big event. “If we play against a team that doesn’t play in the World Cup, that is dangerous,” Capello told me. Perhaps. I still think Turkey is a much better pre-World Cup opponent than the tomato cans the U.S. faced before World Cup ’06 (Latvia, Morocco and Venezuela), and I don’t think Turkey is a dirty team. But the fact remains that the U.S. could ill afford injuries to any of its first-teamers so close to leaving for South Africa.

Who do you think will start up top for the U.S.? How do you see this game playing out? And do you wonder if Bradley might ever consider a 3-5-2 given the back-line concerns and surplus of midfielders? Post your comments below, and check back for more later from Philly …

Real Salt Lake's Robbie Findley has had an inconsistent season in MLS, but does bring plenty of pace to the table. (George Frey/Getty Images)

Three thoughts on the final seven cuts for the U.S.’s 23-man World Cup roster on Wednesday:

• Robbie Findley’s inclusion means coach Bob Bradley feels the need for speed. I’ll be honest: Findley was at the bottom of my list of forwards in this camp, a notion that was only reinforced when he didn’t come off the bench in Tuesday’s 4-2 friendly loss to the Czech Republic. But Bradley’s surprise selection of Findley–and his unexpected cut of target-man Brian Ching–means that Bradley is desperate to have someone up front who can stretch defenses with his speed the way Charlie Davies could before his auto accident. Has Findley ever had a noticeably good game in a U.S. uniform? Well, no. But the gamble Bradley is taking is that the elite athleticism of the World Cup requires at least one speed-burner on your team like Findley who can at least come off the bench if needed in South Africa.

• I thought Ching was safely on the 23. The Czech game must not have had much impact on Bradley’s decision-making, because Ching was one of the U.S.’s best players in the second half, using hard work and creativity to hold the ball up top and set up his teammates. The one moment that now sticks out to me is when Ching was racing downfield on a U.S. break against the Czechs. Not only was he not quite able to keep up, but you could almost hear his hamstrings screaming as he ran downfield. (The chance petered out, by the way.) Bradley doesn’t usually spring surprises–he’s a pretty deliberate, predictable coach–but keeping Findley and jettisoning Ching is a stunner. Bradley also found room in the 23 for both Edson Buddle and Herculez Gómez, two forwards who were nowhere on the radar screen last fall but used high-scoring club seasons to launch themselves onto the World Cup team. (Their selections, and the exclusion of midfielder Alejandro Bedoya, suggest to me that Clint Dempsey is more likely to be used as a midfielder than as a forward.)

• The big names all made the U.S. roster. We would have really had some headlines if Bradley had decided to drop, say, Oguchi Onyewu. But all of the players that I expect to start in South Africa are on this roster, and the big-news selection (Findley) may not even see a minute on the field at the World Cup. Perhaps the big news is how much more attention the release of the U.S. World Cup roster has gotten this year than ever before. Perhaps it’s because of ESPN’s increased coverage, or because the 23-man roster is being announced three weeks later than it was in 2006. But it has nevertheless been fun to have the public debate that takes place in every soccer country (Who’s in? Who’s out?) over the past several months. Now the 23 Golden Tickets have been issued. Now is when things get serious. The 2010 World Cup is nearly upon us.

The roster:

Goalkeepers: Brad Guzan (Aston Villa, England), Marcus Hahnemann (Wolverhampton, England), Tim Howard (Everton, England)

Defenders: Carlos Bocanegra (Rennes, France), Jonathan Bornstein (Chivas USA), Steve Cherundolo (Hannover, Germany), Jay DeMerit (Watford, England), Clarence Goodson (IK Start, Norway), Oguchi Onyewu (AC Milan, Italy), Jonathan Spector (West Ham, England)

Midfielders: DaMarcus Beasley (Glasgow Rangers, Scotland), Michael Bradley (Borussia Moenchengladbach, Germany), Ricardo Clark (Eintracht Frankfurt, Germany), Clint Dempsey (Fulham, England), Landon Donovan (Los Angeles), Maurice Edu (Glasgow Rangers, Scotland), Benny Feilhaber (AGF Aarhus, Denmark), Stuart Holden (Bolton, England), Jose Torres (Pachuca, Mexico)

Forwards: Jozy Altidore (Hull, England), Edson Buddle (Los Angeles), Robbie Findley (Salt Lake), Herculez Gomez (Pachuca, Mexico).

What are your thoughts on the U.S. lineup? Who should have made it? Who shouldn’t?

HARTFORD, Conn. — U.S. coach Bob Bradley took the unusual step of requesting an unscheduled chat with four media members on Sunday, the last day of the U.S. team’s week-long stay at Princeton University. Bradley is not the emotive type, but you could tell that spending a week before the World Cup at his alma mater was a special moment for him in his career.

“This week at Princeton has been great,” Bradley said. “The facilities, the organization that went into it, the people behind it, just made it a great place for us to get started. I just wanted to say a thank-you to everybody that was involved this week.”

Perhaps it wasn’t surprising that Bradley flashed his biggest smile of the week when he posed with Hall of Famer Pete Carril, the 79-year-old former Princeton basketball coach. As a young soccer coach at Princeton in the 1980s, Bradley latched onto Carril, who served as a sort of Yoda figure, offering wisdom to Bradley at one of the local watering holes.

“Normally you’re in a conversation with somebody and you say ‘A’ and they say ‘B’ and it keeps going from there,” Bradley recalled. “I found out early from Pete, I would say ‘A’ and he’d maybe say ‘W.’ At some point you then understand that there’s other ways to see things. When you’re a coach and you come in contact with people who do see things a little differently, who see it at a different level, who challenge you, that’s important. To have him show up was great.”

Bradley’s admiration for Carril is nothing new. One quirk about Princeton is that every undergraduate is required to write a senior thesis, and all those theses are available for public reading at the Mudd Library on campus. For most Princeton students, the senior thesis is a life-changing project, the closest they will ever come to writing a book.

The people who often come to read old theses are journalists looking for background information on Princeton alums like Michelle Obama, Elena Kagan and David Duchovny. Last week I went to read Bradley’s senior thesis from 1980. Titled “The History of Intercollegiate Athletics at Princeton,” the 105-page thesis examines a number of sports, including the basketball team that was coached by Carril.

On page 56, one of Bradley’s paragraphs from 30 years ago stood out: “Carril is not able to recruit the top-notch city talent. In fact, many of his players are barely recruited by other schools. But Carril is able to take these players and teach them his patient, intelligent style. Carril’s teams are noted for their tough defense, patient, often deliberate offense, taking only the good shot, and team play. To me, there is nothing better than to watch a Princeton basketball team frustrate and beat a ‘bigger and better’ team. Yes, the coaching staff is definitely very important.”

Know what that sounds like? A mission statement for Bradley as the coach of this U.S. team on the eve of the World Cup.

(In case you’re wondering, there’s a nifty search engine you can use to find the names of theses written by Princeton alums, including two by members of the Class of ’96: U.S. assistant coach Jesse Marsch’s “Shaken, Not Stirred: An Evaluation of Earthquake Awareness in California” and your truly’s “Playing the Political Game: Soccer Clubs in Argentine Civil Society.”)

As you might have noticed, this is also my new World Cup blog. Read it. Bookmark it. Enjoy it. And feel free to come back for regular posts in the coming weeks…