Charleston Battery veteran Robbie Crawford announced his retirement on Thursday, ending a 13-season career that saw him compete in his native Scotland and in Scandinavia before ending his career in the USL Championship.

The 31-year-old will become an assistant coach for Battery boss Ben Pirmann in 2025, continuing the pathway that numerous players have taken from the pitch to the sidelines over the years.

As we approach the 2025 season, 14 assistant coaches in the Championship are former players in the league. Among them are the likes of Darnell King at Phoenix Rising FC, who went from lifting the trophy at the 2023 USL Championship Final as the club’s captain to joining its coaching staff last offseason, and former Rob Vincent, who joined the Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC Academy post-retirement and moved into the First Team staff after starring for the Hounds previously as a player.

What Crawford, King and the others currently working as assistants may be aiming for long-term is the opportunity to lead a side themselves. Currently in the USL Championship era 13 former players have taken the helm at clubs. This offseason, FC Tulsa’s appointment of Luke Spencer and Phoenix Rising FC’s of Pa-Modou Kah have become the latest in that trend.

Here are some of the most notable players turned Head Coaches so far.

James O’Connor (Louisville City FC, 2015-2018)

A veteran midfielder when he joined Orlando City SC in 2012, O’Connor recorded 45 appearances for the Lions across three seasons while also serving as an assistant coach to Adrian Heath. During that time, he helped the side win the 2013 USL Championship Final before being appointed the first Head Coach in Louisville City FC’s history before its inaugural season.

Over three-and-a-half seasons, O’Connor built the side that has maintained a remarkable level of consistency at the top of the Championship. In 2017, he became the first and currently only person to win the Championship Final as a player and coach when LouCity won its first title. He now serves as President of LouCity and Soccer Holdings, LLC.

Mark Briggs (Wilmington Hammerheads FC, 2016; Real Monarchs SLC; 2017-18, Sacramento Republic FC, 2020-2024)

As the saying goes, Briggs had more clubs than Arnold Palmer during his playing career, but the Wilmington Hammerheads became the place where the English midfielder found notable success on the field, leading the side to the USL Second Division title in 2009. After his retirement from playing four years later, he became an assistant for the Hammerheads in 2015 before moving into the Head Coach role the following year, where he led the side to the Fourth Round of the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup before being eliminated in a penalty shootout by Real Salt Lake.

That contest proved serendipitous when the following year Briggs was hired as an assistant at Real Monarchs SLC, and after Mike Petke’s promotion to RSL’s sidelines after one game of the year, Briggs took the helm and led the Monarchs to the USL Championship Players’ Shield and earned Coach of the Year honors. More recently, his five seasons at Sacramento Republic FC saw him lead the side to the 2022 U.S. Open Cup Final and a first-place finish in the Western Conference in 2023 while standing as one of only three managers to currently have logged 100 victories in the Championship in his career.

Neill Collins (Tampa Bay Rowdies, 2018-23; Sacramento Republic FC, 2025-present)

Unlike others on this list, Collins went straight from being the Tampa Bay Rowdies’ center back in 2018 to becoming the club’s manager – his final league appearance for the side on May 12 came seven days before his first game in charge against Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC on May 19, 2018. Already well on his way in coaching education, however, the Troon, Scotland native took to his new position quickly and returned the Rowdies to the playoffs in his first full season in charge in 2019.

That preceded consecutive Eastern Conference titles in 2020 and 2021, while in 2021 the club also won the Players’ Shield and Collins the Coach of the Year award, as the Rowdies became a year-in-and year-out power in the league. After voyaging across the Atlantic Ocean to lead Barnsley and Raith Rovers, Collins will return to the Championship this season after his appointment by Sacramento Republic FC in December.

Danny Cruz (Louisville City FC, 2021-present)

Of the coaches on this list, Cruz spent the least time on the field in the Championship, making only nine appearances for Real Monarchs SLC before joining Mark Briggs’ staff in 2018 and subsequently heading to Louisville City later that year to be part of John Hackworth’s staff at the club.

Since then, Cruz has become a mainstay on the sidelines at Lynn Family Stadium. Currently the fourth-longest tenured Head Coach in the league since his promotion early in the 2021 season, the 35-year-old has led LouCity to its two best regular seasons in club history, including this past campaign’s 24-win and 76-point year that earned him Coach of the Year honors, and the Eastern Conference title in 2022. One accomplishment is left for Cruz as he enters his fifth season, and that’s to add a third league title to the club’s trophy case.

Juan Guerra (Oakland Roots SC 2022; Phoenix Rising FC, 2022-23)

The former Venezuela international stepped straight into the coaching ranks after concluding his playing career at Indy Eleven at the end of the 2018 season and quickly became a rising star in the coaching ranks. After two seasons with Indy, he joined Phoenix Rising’s staff in 2021 to continue his coaching development before being handed his first head coaching position at Oakland Roots SC at the start of the 2022 season.

During his first season in Oakland and with Phoenix struggling to live up to their prior campaigns, Guerra was brought back to Rising as its new Head Coach in late August that season. The move paid off for Phoenix the following season as after an up-and-down regular season campaign everything fell together in the playoffs for Rising as it became the first team to win four consecutive road games on the way to winning the USL Championship title, the first in Phoenix’s history.

James Chambers (Colorado Springs Switchbacks FC, 2024-present)

In comparison to most of the names in this group, Chambers has arguably the most experience in the USL Championship of anyone. He made 116 appearances across the regular season and playoffs for Bethlehem Steel FC as a player – the most of the six listed here – and subsequently went on to be an assistant coach in the league for three seasons upon moving to the Switchbacks with former Head Coach Brendan Burke and current Sporting Director Stephen in 2021.

The 37-year-old took all of that experience and applied it to success in his first year as the Switchbacks’ Head Coach this past season. After a rough start to the year, the Switchbacks emerged as a force in the Western Conference to earn a top-two finish. What followed was a postseason run that saw the side only trail for six minutes across four games as Colorado Springs won its first league title before a sellout crowd at Weidner Field.