There are currently 25 teams in the USL Championship. Only five of those teams have a manager who has been with their current club for longer than two calendar years: Charleston Battery, Rhode Island FC, Detroit City, Indy Eleven….and Hartford Athletic.
That Hartford would be in that group is on some level surprising, given the chaotic turnover of their first five seasons of existence, which saw the club employ Jimmy Nielsen, Radhi Jaïdi, Harry Watling, Tab Ramos and Omid Namazi, not to mention an interim spell for Ray Reid. The average tenure of those managers was less than one calendar year, with only Jaïdi managing a winning record, and that in the pandemic-stricken 2020 season.
But when you consider who Hartford’s manager has been for those two-plus calendar years, it’s perhaps less surprising. Brendan Burke, who arrived ahead of the 2024 season, has been one of the most highly-regarded managers in the Championship since his time with Philadelphia Union II. His work in Hartford – including winning the club’s first-ever silverware in 2025 – has only brought him more plaudits, including multiple Championship Coach of the Week awards, as well as winning Coach of the Month in August of last year.
Earlier this season, Burke also got his 100th career win in the USL Championship, and he’s closing in on becoming the third manager in league history to take charge of 300 league games across their career. Only former Charleston Battery manager Mike Anhaueser, with 303 regular-season games under his belt, and Bob Lilley, who had 386 regular-season games split between Rochester Rhinos and Pittsburgh Riverhounds, have more than Burke’s 277 games as a manager in the USL Championship.
And every time Burke leads his team out onto the pitch, he extends the record for Hartford managers. Prior to his arrival, the record for most games by a Hartford manager was 49, held by Harry Watling. Burke surpassed that last season, and two weeks ago, in his team’s 4-2 win over Charlotte Independence in the USL Cup quarterfinal, Hartford played their 100th game in all competitions since Burke took over ahead of the 2024 season. He hasn’t been on the sidelines for all of those games – Burke has served multiple one-game suspensions for red cards received during Championship play – but whether he’s been the man in the tactical area or not, it’s been his team all along.
“I personally expected to reach that mark,” said Burke when speaking to the Blazing Musket during Hartford’s recent bye week. “I don't know that the outside world would have expected anyone to reach that mark. So it's a privilege. It's an honor. But these players deserve all the credit in the world for helping us to get there. I look at guys like Jordan [Scarlett] who've been in it from the start and really helped change the complexion of this club in so many different positive ways. And I'm glad for whatever part I played in that.”
Burke may have expected to reach the 100-game mark, but it hasn’t always been obvious that Hartford would do what was required to extend their most accomplished manager beyond the end of the 2026 season and give him a shot at another 100 games with the club. In the absence of a new deal for Burke, the American soccer rumor mill linked him to just about every job of consequence that has come open, with a return to Philadelphia Union of MLS, or a move to a USL Championship club like Louisville City among the possibilities that swirled on social media before his extension with Hartford was announced earlier this summer.
“It [the extension] didn't come quickly,” said Burke. “It took a while to work through it, which all good things do. But I really see signs of big growth here that factored into the decision, and just the autonomy to continue to build this the way I have seen fit. That's really important to me.”
Having the autonomy to build and operate the footballing side of things without interference is certainly important to Burke, but there’s more to it than that. No manager does this all alone, however, and the support of ownership is also key. Burke has had plenty of positive things to say of late about the role that Hartford’s ownership group is playing in taking the club to the next level.
“The support from ownership has just grown and grown in different ways, facilities and support off the field in terms of helping the players with things as simple as food and mental health care," Burke said. "We're making positive strides in every area of the club on the technical side. So they deserve a lot of credit as a group for trusting us to implement the right things to help these guys [the players] move it forward.”
There's also one more factor that’s kept Burke in Hartford: trophies. In the offseason, he was definitive that he wanted more trophies, and the opportunity to do that here, building on the foundation that he’s done so much to create, was an important consideration in deciding to remain with the club.
“When I spoke with my wife about it, it we were like, since Philadelphia, we haven't stayed in a place longer than three years," Burke said. "We had all the success early on everywhere we've gone, but we've never seen it through. So this is a place I want to see it through and I don't want to just build the foundation for someone else to capitalize on. I want to enjoy it myself.”
Last season was enjoyable; it brought Burke that first major trophy as the top man at a club, and completed the turnaround that he began ahead of the 2024 season. But if there truly are signs of growth in Hartford, it could easily get a lot more enjoyable in the future, and Burke quite understandably doesn’t want to turn that over to someone else, as he did with Stephen Hogan and James Chambers in Colorado Springs.
“I would love to get to another final," Burke said. "That would be a huge privilege. You know, there's nothing like those games. It's what we work for and when you start tasting those and have a few trophies mixed in it, it becomes an obsession. I look at the next couple months as an opportunity to maybe get that feeling again. And then you're chasing it even harder next year. So it's been a really good experience coming here and, and building almost from scratch. We removed essentially the entire team over the course of the first year. That’s what I thought was necessary to move us forward, and we've moved forward.”
And if Hartford are going to continue to move forward, they need to bring more resources to bear for their manager, something that hasn't always appeared to be top of mind for club leadership. A lot of that needs to come off the pitch, where Hartford needs to continue to elevate the experience of playing for the club.
“I think we need to continue to expand and build on our training facility and make sure that the standard of our training fields continues to get better and better," Burke said. "It's improved vastly even since I walked through the door in terms of the performance center and things like that. So there's been real growth there, but I still think we have a long way to go there.”
It’s no secret that difficulties in getting access to Day Hill Dome in the preseason, combined with the decision not to take the traditional preseason training trip, played some role in Hartford’s stuttering start, as they hit the regular season with limited preparation time. And while Hartford has made great use of Day Hill Dome – and has substantially improved the facilities at their headquarters across the street – there’s no question that ultimately a dedicated training facility, owned and controlled by the club, will be necessary.
“Having full control of a grass field is number one,” said Burke. “I think that's important to the maintenance of the bodies because we don't have big rosters in this league. That allows you to keep guys healthy. It brings down your medical costs. Over the my first three years here, for whatever reason, we've incurred a lot of injuries and we've we've dropped points because of it. That grass field is paramount.”
There is a grass field at Day Hill Dome, but it has been in poor condition throughout Hartford’s 2026 season, and has not been usable for regular training activity. Making sure that the training surface is maintained at a high level or finding another surface somewhere else that is up to snuff is a key priority for this club as they look ahead to the future. It’s certainly not an area that Hartford can afford to skimp on, even if there might be substantial costs associated with activating and maintaining a grass surface.
And there will need to be more resources invested in the roster, too. While Hartford’s 2026 season has been blighted by an injury crisis, it has also exposed how thin the roster really is, with Burke forced to rely on multiple 25-day contracts to nurse his club through some extremely difficult stretches.
That’s something that will continue to be an issue in the future, as the need to invest in top-level talent will only grow with the looming introduction of promotion and relegation into the USL ecosystem. Other clubs will seize the opportunity for growth, and Hartford will need to keep pace, with Burke pointing specifically to Portland Hearts of Pine as an example of a club with big ambitions.
“Ultimately these rosters are going to get bigger as Pro-Rel comes in and bigger stadiums come in and you know, there's more on the line, there's more for people to win," Burke said. "There's more in terms of sponsorships and ticket sales and things like that, that really drive organizations forward. I'm looking up at Portland, Maine building a nine or ten thousand seat stadium. There's going to be teams in League One that just decide to flip the switch and we need to be prepared for those, keeping up with those teams is going to be the next priority. And I think that's facilities, travel and roster budgets.”
That arrival of Pro-Rel will also drive stadium improvements. Increased capacity and amenities for fans are among the things that are most visible when stadium renderings pop up online, but Hartford also desperately needs improved locker room facilities (particularly if the club is serious about advancing women’s soccer as well), as the club can’t afford for the experience of playing for Hartford to lag too far behind other clubs at the same level. Improvements at Trinity Health Stadium will be both expensive and complicated, but they are an important priority for Burke as he looks to the club’s future.
“This home environment, we all want to make it bigger, but we're only going to be able to make it bigger with outside support," Burke said. "That comes from the fans, that comes from the city, the state. There's a lot of different factors that go into that, but those are the things that we're actively chasing as a club now. We want to make this a premier venue in Division One. That's the goal.”
It’s an important goal, but first and foremost, there’s the product on the field. And with his own contract secured, Burke is turning his attention to keeping together the core of the team that won the USL Cup last season, is back in the semifinals this year, and is looking for back-to-back playoff appearances for the first time in club history.
“I want to keep this core group together as long as I can,” said Burke. "You look at teams like Louisville, when they built them, they kept them together for long spells. [Sean] Totsch is still there. So that's almost 10 years later. That's what I'm trying to accomplish here.”
Four players have recently signed contract extensions, with Sebastian Anderson, Emmanuel Samadia, Beverly Makangila and TJ Presthus all committing to Hartford through the end of the 2028 season. They’ll join players like Samuel Careaga, who were already under contract for multiple seasons as that ‘core group’ that Burke is looking to establish.
Keeping that core together can be challenging when a team is good, as players will begin to get other opportunities. Hartford lost Kyle Edwards to just such an opportunity this past offseason, and will likely see other players depart in a similar manner in the future. Burke acknowledged that challenge, while emphasizing how important continuing to win is to keeping players in Hartford for the long term.
“It's not always easy to keep a core group together when they start having success," Burke said. "The reality is, other teams are wanting our guys now, I would say every one of our starters has interests from multiple teams around the league. That wasn't a Hartford problem in the past. So, keeping them together, there's a financial reality, but there's also the fact that guys might want to live in Florida, guys might want to live in California. You have to convince everybody that we're going to do more, that we're going to accomplish more, and they should want to be a part of it. And right now I think we have that, which is amazing. So we really have to capitalize on that right now.”
Extending four players this summer is part of capitalizing on that, and within each extension is a story of what has changed for Hartford since Burke arrived. Take Makangila for instance. The midfielder signed in Hartford ahead of the 2023 season, and is now the only remaining holdover from the pre-Burke era.
That first season was, in Makangila’s words, “difficult,” as he made just nine starts and played less than a thousand minutes as the club floundered under Tab Ramos and Omid Namazi. But the arrival of Burke changed everything.
“I’m comfortable here [now], it feels like home here,” said Makangila when speaking to the Blazing Musket. “We have a good relationship, I have a lot of confidence in him.”
That confidence is mutual. In two seasons in Colorado Springs and two seasons and counting in Hartford, Makangila has started at least 15 league games and played at least 1,500 league minutes in every single one, and is on track to do so again in 2026.
“I had Bev in Colorado before he ever came here,"Burke said. "So in my mind, Bev was one of our guys. I trusted him. I knew him. I knew he trusted me. And I think he's found a different level over the last two years.I know there was a period last year where he got caught off balance a few times in transition, but this year I'm watching him control the flow of games, control space, communicate a little more. So I've been so happy with his growth and that's the reason that he's the only one who survived.”
Makangila is the type of player that will form part of Hartford’s core into the future, who will help Burke build this club through another hundred games, as the manager tries to take the club to another level, not just on the field, but off it as well.
“I want us to be recognizable in town, not us individually as people, but our brand,” said Burke. “I want to see our brand when I move around the city. I don't I don't see it enough right now. And that comes when people are really getting behind the team in a way that kind of transcends the club. That's that's what I'm hoping to see by the time I walk out of here.”
