Nashville SC was good before B.J. Callaghan. Would you just look at the club now, though.
With Callaghan as coach, it's gathering trophies. It's conquering Major League Soccer's regular season in dominant fashion. Before long, it'll be hosting playoff games, making a run toward an MLS Cup as a favored, No. 1 seed.
The Supporters' Shield is the trophy that goes to the club with the best record in MLS' regular season (think Presidents' Trophy in hockey), and Nashville SC is about to win its first. It can clinch Oct. 24 at Montreal. If not, it'll clinch soon after that. It's just a matter of time. As of Oct. 20, Nashville had a whopping 12-point lead on second-place teams with four games left until the regular season ends on Nov. 7.
After that is
the MLS Cup playoffs. Then the real fun could arrive at Geodis Park.
How refreshing, right? While our city's sports fans (and sports media) habitually bemoan every aspect of the lousy Titans (and mediocre Predators), scarce attention goes to our big-league pro team that's actually winning big. For the most part, it has been that way since Nashville SC's expansion entry into MLS in 2020.
But this season has been special. Nashville SC has gone from good to dominant, and when you look for the biggest reason why (other than a key offseason addition of Argentinian midfielder Cristian Espinoza), the difference has been Callaghan.
Getting to know B.J. Callaghan
He showed up midseason in 2024 from the U.S. men’s national team, which he once coached in an interim capacity. What Callaghan has done in 2026 with “Nashville 2.0” — the bold, intrepid refresh of a club once known for cynical, defensive soccer — has made this club no longer just respected but feared as an attacking, freewheeling, scoring machine.
An average sports fan in Nashville wouldn't know much about this coach who's doing all the winning around here, and that's mostly because of Callaghan. As a long-time assistant coach, he's never outwardly embraced the media spotlight in his first run as a full-time, MLS head coach. He treats press conferences solely as a means to an end. They are prosaic, one-way avenues to send messages to his team and, at times, to Nashville's fans.
He's otherwise reluctant to share details or insights. He speaks in generalities. He's uncomfortable going off script. Seems like he's even more uncomfortable making it about him.
The unfortunate part is fans don't often get to hear from the real Callaghan, who is delightfully different from the guy at the podium after games. When the cameras aren't rolling, you begin to understand why he's been so good for Nashville SC. Callaghan is exceptionally sharp. He's insightful. He can be funny when he's relaxed, and unflinchingly honest, direct and uncomplicated. He thinks critically, doesn't abide excuses and tries to be several steps ahead.
An example: In early May, Nashville SC was eliminated by Mexican side Tigres UANL in the semifinals of the CONCACAF Champions Cup, losing two Tuesday night legs that were sandwiched around a weekend trip to Philadelphia for an MLS league game. The refusal of MLS to reschedule those weekend games, which might have helped its teams in a major regional semifinal, became a public complaint for then-LAFC coach Marc Dos Santos, who lost in the other semifinal.
But nothing from Callaghan. Soon after Nashville’s semifinal loss to Tigres, I asked him his thoughts on the cramped schedule, referencing the gripes from LAFC. Callaghan could have echoed them.
Instead . . .
“I coach Nashville,” Callaghan replied icily. “Whenever they tell us to play, we're going to prepare and have our guys ready to play. We don't try to consume ourselves with things that we don't control.”
Callaghan, as I learned later, had a forward-thinking purpose to such an evasive answer. He didn't want to use the schedule as an excuse for losing, because he doesn’t want his players to do that. Point being, once a team starts conveniently excusing poor results with external factors, where does it end? Weather? Game times? Travel?
America's coach, briefly
After this past summer’s World Cup, there was a brief period of uncertainty about Mauricio Pochettino’s status as coach of the U.S. men’s national team. Pochettino ended up staying in the role, but until that became settled, there was a little nervousness when it came to Nashville SC.
Had the job come open, Callaghan would’ve been a likely candidate, and not just because of Nashville SC’s success. He has earned his stripes as a coach with the USMNT, both as a longtime assistant and as interim head coach for seven games during summer 2023.
Callaghan beat Mexico and Canada and won the CONCACAF Nations League while filling in during the national team’s disjointed Gregg Berhalter era. That was a feat made more impressive by the fact Callaghan had been a career assistant to that point. His first-ever game as a head coach was leading the USMNT past rival Mexico.
Who else could say that?
“The teams that are closely connected,” Callaghan said, comparing that interim job to his current one, “that play for something bigger than themselves and are aligned behind a bigger version, whether that's a national team or a club team, I still think that’s the recipe for success.”
The next summer, Nashville SC hired Callaghan to replace Gary Smith, who’d been fired after precociously leading the club through the early days of MLS expansion with playoff appearances. The 2024 switch, as noted, was stylistic. Nashville SC was eager to play a more attractive brand of soccer, which led to Callaghan.
“A lot of due diligence by Mike (Jacobs) and that group of identifying someone who probably shares a similar philosophy on what they want to do,” Callaghan said. “ . . . I spent 20 years of my career being an assistant coach. That gave me, in my opinion, the benefit to steal bits and pieces of a lot of the coaches that I'd worked with.”
Aspects that made Nashville SC appealing, Callaghan said, had to do with the advantages of an involved owner like John Ingram and the fact that "there was a lot of really good already here.”
“For me,” he said, “it was an easy choice."
The results do the talking
I could throw in other quotes from my recent one-on-one interview with Callaghan, just to do it. But as already explained, it was arid territory. On the record, at least.
With Callaghan, the "how" is rarely easy to discern. Same with his backstory.
He’ll offer tidbits when asked. He’s from New Jersey. He has two daughters in high school. He met his wife in college. At Ursinus, he played goalkeeper, and then he went into coaching because others kept telling him he should. If he wasn’t coaching, Callaghan thinks he’d probably be a schoolteacher or something that'd have to do with education and working with young people.
A tattoo on his arm, peeking out from under a shirt sleeve, hints at more to his story. But he's not going to tell it. Nope, doesn’t much like talking about himself, and he’s even less inclined to dwell on success, be it his or his team’s or both, because to do so runs counter to a core theme of Callaghan’s approach:
Nashville SC, on his watch, will never truly arrive, even if it’s playing “well.”
“I don't really know that we are ever satisfied that we're meeting expectations,” Callaghan said. “For us, we're going to constantly push . . . When we define ‘well,’ there's defining like where we are in the standings or where we are with points. But we don't judge ourselves here on ‘well.’ We have very clear ideas on how we want to play the game, and there's elements of the way that we play that we're doing very well. But there's also areas during the game that we're not doing so well.”
Tough-minded, this guy. The messaging doesn't change and won’t change. When Callaghan says, “We're a team that wants to win every game and we expect to win every game,” that’s an obvious statement, except it means more in the context of soccer. What he’s saying is that Nashville SC no longer approaches any game as unwinnable.
It’ll remain determined to play to win, not for a draw. That means it’s going to play attractive soccer. It'll attack. It won’t sit back and let the other team control possession in the hopes of lucking into a counterattacking goal.
Callaghan’s Nashville SC intends to dictate terms as clearly the best team in MLS.
This season, thus far, that's exactly what it has done.
Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and hang out with him on Bluesky @gentryestes.bsky.social
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: How did enigmatic coach B.J. Callaghan lead Nashville SC atop MLS? | Exclusive
