In the spring of 2009, Anthony Hudson was a first-time head coach with a case of walking pneumonia, living in a chilly, one-bedroom apartment with a shared bathroom in the D.C. area.
“I couldn’t not go to training,” he recalled recently. “I was quite young. I knew people would start pointing the finger and saying I wasn’t ready. Sometimes you have to put your head down and get on with it.”
Hudson was 28 at the time, marshaling a third-tier club, Real Maryland, with home matches at a high school in Rockville. His tenure lasted just two seasons and the organization didn’t survive much longer.