Young, But Experienced Coach Stuart Campbell Ready To Lead The Rowdies To The Postseason

As a soccer-obsessed youngster growing up in Britain, Stuart Campbell knew little of the game in the United States. What he did knew boiled down to the words Cosmos and Rowdies.

“When I was growing up they were the two most famous names in U.S. soccer,” Campbell said.

That notoriety spans four decades and when Campbell, now the coach at Tampa Bay (2W-2D-6L, 8 points), puts his team on the field against the Cosmos (5-4-1, 19 points) at Al Lang Stadium in St. Petersburg, FL, on Saturday night the match will be the marquee event as the Rowdies celebrate the club’s 40th anniversary.

To mark the club’s founding in 1975, players, coaches, and club officials will take part in events over the Labor Day weekend. The public is invited to the festivities, which begin with a Happy Hour on Friday night.

Campbell, 37, became one of the youngest coaches now stalking the touchline in the NASL when he was named Rowdies coach last week after serving as an assistant to Thomas Rongen. Only Indy Eleven’s interim coach Tim Regan, 34, and San Antonio’s Alan Marcina, 36, are younger than Campbell.

Campbell has seldom allowed his age to hold him back. He signed on with Leicester City at 12 years old and made his club debut in the midfield at 18. He later played 117 times for Grimsby Town and then 288 times for Bristol Rovers. Named captain of Rovers in 2006, Campbell helped the team to the quarterfinals of the 2007-08 FA Cup, the best showing in club history. At the same time, barely in his 30s, Campbell began to turn his attention away from playing the field and toward the manager’s seat as he started studying for his coaching qualifications. In 2011, he became Bristol’s interim manager with 12 games left in the season.

“I think it’s a natural progression for certain players,” Campbell told NASL.com. “I had a long career in England and was encouraged by Paul Trollope, the assistant manager of the Wales national team and manager at Cardiff City, to take the UEFA qualification course when I was 28-29. Maybe he saw something in me. When you’re a professional player you think your career is never going to end. He was spot on. I loved it. In my late 20s, early 30s I had one eye on coaching, but I had seen too many guys jump in at the deep end and try too quickly to try to work their way up the ladder.”

That was not the route Campbell took. After being dropped by Bristol City, he signed on as a player with the Rowdies late in 2011, helping the Rowdies to the NASL title in 2012. He wore two hats the next year: player and assistant coach, hanging up his cleats last season to become a full-time assistant.

“Football is what I’ve known my whole life,” he said. “I wanted to stay involved after playing. I knew this was going to be a huge challenge. We’ve been on a bad run, but I’m confident that we can turn it around with 10 games left [in the Fall Season]. We have to concentrate on ourselves and not worry about what other teams are doing.”

Campbell landed in the Rowdies’ hot seat in the midst of a three-game losing streak that has left the Rowdies in last place in the 11-team standings. The club last week fashioned a furious rally that erased a two-goal deficit at Ottawa Fury FC, with the game finishing in a 2-2 draw on a late goal by Darwin Espinal.

“There was a lot of positive last week,” he said. “I think we played some very good soccer. We kept going all the way to the end and got a well-deserved equalizer. In hindsight, against first-place Ottawa on turf was a very good result.

“We were on a bad run and it has to affect your confidence. Any coach will try to install their code on the players as quick as possible. Slowly, you try to get their confidence back. It’s a massive, massive factor in soccer or in any professional sport. First and foremost, I want the players to give 100 percent in training and in games. I’m a big believer in how you train is how you play. If you train at 100 percent you’ll take that into the game.”

Though the Rowdies have struggled in the Fall Season, the team’s second-place finish in the Spring Season is keeping hope alive for a berth in The Championship, the NASL’s four-team postseason tournament. In the Combined Standings, Tampa Bay remains in the thick of things.

“I’m continually reminding the players that we’ve had a bad stretch, but it could be worse, but we’re still in the hunt,” Campbell said. “It’s still in our hands. If you just look at the Fall Season things look terrible, but when you click on the Combined Standings you can see we’re still in it. I feel that destiny is in our hands. When you win two or three in a row you never think you’re going to lose again and when you lose two or three in a row you never think you’re going to win again.”

Cosmos coach Giovanni Savarese is justifiably wary of the Rowdies.

“They are a team that likes to play good soccer,” Savarese said during his weekly conference call. “They have some good players, experienced players, they’ve been a bit unlucky. They are a good team all around. Now they’re playing at home against the Cosmos. It’s a good moment for them to raise their level and we expect that from them. We’re ready for it. We expect it to be a very difficult match.”

The Cosmos and the Rowdies played some classic matches during the NASL’s Golden Era. And although the names have changed and the years have passed, the rivalry remains. With players like Steve Wegerle (who played for the Rowdies and the Cosmos), Wes McLeod, Winston DuBose, John Gorman, and coach Gordon Jago part of the 40th anniversary celebration, Saturday night should be a special one on Florida’s Gulf Coast.