FC Birmingham Signs Internationally Renowned Coach
FC Birmingham announced today that former Birmingham Southern College Men’s Soccer coach Preston Goldfarb has been hired as the head coach of the club’s top team. This team will begin play in August of 2021. Goldfarb will also assist in helping form and develop the club’s youth academy system which will begin play in September of 2021 and the club’s reserve team which will begin play in the spring of 2022.
Goldfarb is an internationally renowned coach with a storied coaching career spanning over 40 years. His ties to the Birmingham and Alabama soccer universe go back to the early 1970’s where he began the Mid State Soccer League for youth and adult players. In 1983, Goldfarb began the men’s soccer program at Birmingham Southern College. He coached until he retired after the 2015 season with a coaching record of 414-284-53, numerous All Americans on the field and in the classroom, a 2nd place NAIA finish in 1996, 3 NAIA Final Fours, multiple NAIA District & Region Championships and two Big South regular season championships. He began the first amateur soccer team in the state in 1993, the Birmingham Grasshoppers, which played in the USISL and qualified for the Sizzlin 9 Playoffs in 1994 as the only amateur team in the field. Goldfarb’s vision and hard work were the main factor in the 1996 Men’s Olympic Soccer coming to Legion Field where 90,000 fans packed the Old Grey Lady to watch the USA play Argentina. His internationally known “Excellence through Fundamentals” summer soccer camp that began in 1986 with such European and South American greats as Toni Schumacher, Chris Waddle, Graham Roberts, Orlando Pecanha, Rui Menezes and Armin Kraaz as camp instructors continues to this day on the Birmingham Southern campus under the direction of current BSC Men’s Coach Greg Vinson.
His crowning coaching achievement though was on the international level where he led the US Men’s Open team to the Maccabi Games gold medal in Israel, not once, but twice, in 2013 and 2017. Players from these teams have gone on to play for Division 1 teams in the US as well as in professional leagues around the world. Goldfarb was elected to the Jewish Sports Heritage Sports Hall of Fame in 2018 to compliment the same awards he had received from the NAIA in 2000 and Birmingham Southern College in 2017.
In addition to his coaching accolades, Goldfarb had the opportunity to spend numerous hours observing and learning from some of the best coaches in the world having spent time with German Bundesliga sides 1. FC Koln and Eintracht Frankfurt, two stalwarts of the league since its inception in 1963. This began in 1985 in Koln where he was able to strike up a long friendship with Toni Schumacher, goalkeeper for runner up West Germany in the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, as well as Pierre Littbarski, member of the 1986 West German World Cup squad and one of the most recognized goal scorers in Bundesliga history. Both are still very involved in the game today in Germany with Schumacher being a Vice President at 1. FC Koln and Littbarski in the current role of lead scout for VFL Wolfsburg. Goldfarb’s time at Eintracht Frankfurt allowed him to make a lifelong friend in Armin Kraaz, a star defender from the club in the 1980’s and former Eintracht Frankfurt Youth Academy Director, who is still very involved with the club today. In 1991, Goldfarb received the Bund Deutscher Fussball Lehrer Coaching License. Goldfarb looks back at his time in Germany as the building blocks of his coaching foundation and a system of play that he has never wavered from.
When asked why he was coming out of retirement to join FC Birmingham, his answer was simple, “I saw this team and its mission in being a real city team as a way of giving back to the game I love in the city I love. Truthfully, I missed the training field very much and this team and its mission helps me back on the field and allows me the opportunity to teach the game the way I believe it should be played which is “Simple Soccer”! Peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white bread, not champagne and caviar, simple not fancy!”
FC Birmingham owner Doug Walk knows he is getting a highly qualified coach in Goldfarb that can lead the organization now and into the future. “I am beyond excited to have Coach Goldfarb managing this team! Under his direction, I know the players will be developed the RIGHT way and everything will be first-class!”
FC Birmingham general manager Trey Fancher is excited to have Goldfarb on board as well. “It is a pleasure to have such a legend as Preston Goldfarb rejoin the game of soccer and become the head coach of FCB Soccer Club. I look forward to working closely with Coach as the GM of the club to build our brand of soccer in Birmingham”.
Additional information on tryouts for the team will be coming out soon as well as the information on the launch of the club’s youth Academy program. Check back at fcbirmingham.com or the club’s Social Media pages for frequent updates.
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