It will be three head coaches in one season for Brooklyn FC as the USL Super League club today announced the departure of Head Coach Jessica Silva.
Officially the team says it "parted ways" with Silva and will be appointing a new interim manager shortly, but Silva appears to be paying the price for Brooklyn falling apart since play resumed after the USL Super League's winter break.
Brooklyn was perched at the top of the Super League table with a six-point lead heading into that winter break in December but has not won any of the nine matches they've played since the league resumed in February.
The last game of Silva's tenure was a particularly brutal 5-0 loss on the road against Carolina Ascent FC on April 12, a result that left BKFC in Third Place in the table, but not comfortably. Brooklyn is level on points with both Fourth and Fifth Place teams, but each of those lower-placed teams has a game or games in hand on Brooklyn and can jump them with the right results.
Hudson River Blue Staff
During the current nine-match winless stretch, Silva's now-former team suffered heavy defeats, scored few goals, and could miss the USL Super League playoff field entirely. Their Spring season record of 0 W-4 D-5 L is unsightly but even worse might be their goal differential during this stretch, which sits at -17, with Silva's squad scoring just four goals while conceding 21 times.
Overall, Silva posted a record of 8 W-5 D-8 L during her brief stint in Brooklyn. If you remember, Silva wasn't in charge of Brooklyn FC for the team's first two matches of the season – hence the earlier reference to BKFC moving on to their third coach of this season.
According to Hudson River Blue's previous reporting, Silva's arrival in Brooklyn was delayed by what was described by a source informed of the situation as "bureaucratic issues" that involved leagues and soccer federations. Kristen Sample was the interim head coach for Brooklyn's opening two fixtures, though she left the club following Silva's arrival and official announcement as coach.
Brooklyn gave Silva, originally from Montréal, Canada, a two-year contract at the time of her hiring while boasting of the experience she had coaching in France at places like FC Metz and as an assistant coach for Canada's youth teams. Instead of seeing out that contract, Silva's firing is added to the growing list of stumbling blocks Brooklyn FC has encountered while in its infancy as a USL expansion franchise.
That infancy has included a delayed start to actually playing in Brooklyn, with the team forced to temporarily call Columbia University's soccer stadium in Upper Manhattan home due to issues with the turf playing surface at Coney Island's Maimonides Park.
The club also announced a one-year delay to their planned launch of a men's team in the USL Championship, and Brooklyn also changed direction at the executive level late in 2024, parting with CEO Maximilian Mansfield and installing Kevin Tenjo as Sporting Director.
Tenjo now is tasked with finding a replacement for Silva, who looked like the perfect coach for the job as of late December, when she'd led Brooklyn to the top of the USL Super League standings. That success disappeared once the calendar flipped to 2025, and Brooklyn will now hope an interim leader can guide them to better results and possible playoff qualification between now and the season's end.
One thing working, potentially, in the team's favor: Four of their final five regular-season matches are home games set to be played at Maimonides Park in Brooklyn. The first task for the new coach looks to be figuring out how to win at their Coney Island baseball stadium home, something this Brooklyn team still has yet to do.
