Really For Real This Time Guys, the Red Bulls Have a Coach Lined Up

After the on-again, off-again Gary McAllister saga -- you know the one that resembled a sort of bad relationship where neither person is good for the other and the two should just break up already and stop asking everyone within earshot for advice more than a functioning head coach search -- the Red Bulls have moved on. And I wonder if McAllister's seen the Red Bulls' new paramour. His name is Paulo Sousa and he's got great hair, has lived all over Europe and he's even been in movies.

Should be enough to get McAllister seething with rage.

Anyway, Sousa's name surfaced roughly two weeks ago with ESPN pundit Alexi Lalas mentioning on Sousa's hire on The Shot podcast. Two days later, Sousa left his job with Hungarian club Videoton, which made front page headlines over there.

Today, Soccer By Ives is reporting Sousa is set on joining the team and that he'll be named early this week. Big Apple Soccer confirmed a few minutes later. Ives reports that Claudio Reyna is set to be Sousa's lead assistant, as well.

Which brings us to how true these reports are. Not to call into question Ives' sources, but McAllister was, for weeks, probably closer to a month, the guy the Red Bulls were going to hire. There was no question. It was a matter of if, not when and it was everyone's sources confirming the move. Then, it wasn't.

The Red Bulls start training camp in a week, by the way. If only because of that, Sousa's hire seems legit. But in the Red Bulls' schizophrenic, meandering search for a head coach, this seems par for the course in a story that's going to take another two weeks to unfold.