Brendan Burke Named USL Championship Coach of the Month
An unbeaten month in league competition made Burke the first Hartford manager to earn the honor
Brendan Burke was named USL Championship Coach of the Month for August 2025. Burke is the first manager in club history to receive that award. During the month, he was also named USL Championship Coach of the Week for Week 25 of the 2025 USL Championship season, the week in which Hartford demolished RIFC 3-0 in El Clamico at Trinity Health Stadium.
The Latics claimed 13 points from five Championship games across the month of August, winning four times and drawing Western Conference leaders Tulsa into the bargain. They also knocked off San Antonio in the quarterfinals of the USL Jägermeister Cup. Those results have the club all the way up into fifth place in the Eastern Conference, as well as into the semifinals of the Jägermeister Cup, where they will take on Greenville Triumph on Wednesday night.
The summer has seen Hartford finally achieve the quality in the attacking third that many expected when Burke was initially hired. There have been fits and starts across the last season and a half, but things have lately taken a turn in a very positive direction. Across those six games in all competitions in the month of August, Hartford outscored opponents 15-4, even managing six goals in two games following the sale of all-time leading scorer Mamadou Dieng.
It’s quite a turnaround from the early part of the season, which saw Hartford struggle in dismal losses to Lexington and Pittsburgh, among others. With the Latics now in the playoff places — and chasing a home playoff game — after languishing at the bottom of the conference for most of the early months of the season, it’s not too much to say that this might be the best coaching job of Burke’s career.
That career includes two stops where he also won a Coach of the Month award: in March of 2022 he received the honor while the manager of Colorado Springs Switchbacks, and in August of 2018, he won it while managing Bethlehem Steel. In 2022, Switchbacks won all three of their fixtures in March, as part of a start to the season that saw them win their first five games in the league. In 2018, Steel won four of their five games in the month of August as the maneuvered into the playoff places. In both of those seasons, Burke’s team made it to the playoffs, with Steel reaching the Eastern Conference semifinals and Switchbacks running all the way to the Western Conference finals.
With it all to play for in two competitions, Burke will be looking to take his side one step further than he did in either of those two seasons. The next step: a Jägermeister Cup semifinal on Wednesday night.