New Dad Brandt Bronico Won’t Stop Until He Has His Trophy

“I want to win some trophies this year.”

We were 30 minutes into a conversation with Charlotte FC midfielder Brandt Bronico and the MLS veteran was ready to answer my question before I finished it.

“We gotta start bringing some trophies to Charlotte,” says Bronico. “Obviously, top four is a good thing to target, but there’s a lot of opportunity. There’s Leagues Cup, there’s Open Cup, and we got the MLS Cup as well as the Supporters’ Shield. So I want to win at least one of those trophies.”

Bronico has been waiting a while for that first trophy with the club. In February 2022, he joined goalkeeper Kristijan Kahlina, now-assistant coach Christian Fuchs, and eight others to take to the pitch in Charlotte FC’s inaugural match at Audi Field in Washington, D.C.

Three years later, Bronico and Kahlina are the only two players left in the lineup from the club’s first starting 11. Of the nine bench players for that match, only midfielder Ben Bender and goalkeeper George Marks are still around, making Bronico an important veteran presence in the club — as well as the team’s representative to the MLS Players Association.

“You don’t have to be a captain to be a leader, and I think that’s an important message for people to grasp,” Bronico told Nerve in a February interview. “This is going to be my ninth year in the league. I kind of know how things work … so if guys have any issues or are struggling to get acclimated, I’m more than happy to help with that.”

Despite Bronico’s leadership role, he started the first match of the season on the bench. Up until this year, the midfielder had started in every opening match in which he was available.

“I was a little bit surprised that I didn’t start,” said Bronico. “I had one of my best preseasons ever, especially as a professional.”

Bronico’s eventful preseason included not only three goals, but the birth of his first child, Brooks.

The hardest worker on the pitch

As one of the club’s “OGs,” Bronico’s bio may be familiar to you: He’s a North Carolina guy who grew up in High Point. He played at UNC Charlotte and with the Chicago Fire. He’s known for being a gym rat and one of the hardest workers on the team.

“There’s always a couple of us, like me, [Brandt], and [Kahlina], who are [in the gym] early,” Charlotte goalkeeper George Marks told Nerve, adding that the trio usually arrives sometime between 8:15-8:30 a.m.

“His work rate is infectious. That’s what makes Brandt special, I think,” said Charlotte FC captain Ashley Westwood. “You see that from the stands, we see it on the pitch; the amount of running he does, the amount of tireless running he does.”

Before college, Bronico played soccer at the club level, and early in his young career a setback at his club became a turning point in his ambitions. He was on trial for the Olympic Development Program, which recruited the best soccer players in each state for interstate competitions.

“When I was 12 or 13, there were six [ODP] teams in North Carolina,” said Bronico. “I went to a tryout and didn’t make one team.

However, Bronico would use the setback as inspiration to improve his game. In less than two years, Bronico would make the third team, then the second team, and finally the first.

“It gives you that motivation to want to get better, to want to train more. It’s like fuel,” said Bronico. “[If] you don’t think I can make it, well, I’m gonna work harder and I’m gonna prove you wrong.

“It’s all about proving people wrong, honestly,” Bronico continued. “I’ve had so many people in my life tell me I wasn’t good enough, tell me I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t make it, but [now] it’s like, [screw you]. I’m gonna go out, I’m gonna do it.”

Proving people wrong is part of Brandt’s ethos. Bronico would go on to play Division I men’s soccer with the 49ers before playing for MLS’s Chicago Fire — but as soon as Charlotte FC was announced, he knew he wanted to come home.

“[Charlotte] really just gets me excited,” said Bronico. “It’s so close to home and I have roots here. We just had our first kid here, I got engaged to my wife here.”

While at UNC Charlotte, Bronico met his future wife, Rebecca, which is where they built a tradition of delivering important messages on pizza boxes that continues on today.

“In college, she loved Hungry Howie’s garlic thin-crust pizza,” said Brandt. “So we have this pizza thing, and that’s how I asked her to be my wife.”

The “pizza thing” goes back to when Brandt first asked Rebecca out in college. He brought Rebecca her favorite pizza and on the back of the pizza box wrote, “This may sound cheesy, but will you be my girlfriend?” The pizza box messages continued for other major life events, like when Brandt delivered the line to Rebecca in Romare Bearden Park as, “This may sound cheesy, but will you marry me?”

On June 19, 2024, Rebecca flipped the script. Bronico had just scored his first goal of the season against Orlando City SC, a nice chip over the goalkeeper off of an unselfish Patrick Agyemang pass.

“So we got this whole thing with the pizza, and so I was walking up the stairs [after the match], and there was a Hungry Howie’s box on the island and I was like, ‘Oh, like, I guess she got pizza.’ Like I didn’t think of it, I’m like still buzzing off the goal, and I opened the box and I was like, ‘Oh, my God.’”

Read more: Patrick Agyemang Traces His Journey from CT to Charlotte FC (2024)

Rebecca had written on the box, “This may sound cheesy, but like how does daddy sound?” enclosing two positive pregnancy tests.

“I think word for word I said, ‘Holy shit!’” Bronico corrected. “I got all teary-eyed, and [we] hugged and I was like, ‘I cannot believe it. Like this is amazing.’”

The Bronicos kept up the theme when they asked their doctor to write the baby’s sex on a Post-it Note and then seal it in an envelope. For this pizza gender reveal they wanted a larger canvas, so they called Benny Pennello’s in NoDa.

“They duct-taped it shut so we wouldn’t look in the car,” said Bronico. “We opened it when we got home and ‘It’s a Boy’ [was] spelled out in pepperoni.

“So we are big on the pizza for celebration,” he added in an understated way.

Marks told us that Bronico’s extensive work in the community serves as a “blueprint” for his own such engagement, including Brandt’s yearly fundraisers for local charity Beds for Kids. Good friends, the two OGs spoke often during the pregnancy.

“I think talking with Brandt, it’s helped him a lot knowing that there’s more to life than playing football,” said Marks. “It’s probably given him a new perspective, and hopefully it will take him to new heights on the field.”

Bronico may not have fully adjusted to fatherhood yet. When we asked him what the first thing he thinks about in the morning is, his answer was immediate: “Soccer.”

Bronico’s newest role as dad

Before Charlotte’s preseason started, Bronico was already on Dad Duty.

“Since Rebecca was pregnant the whole offseason, I just stayed locked in the whole time,” said Brandt. “I spent a majority of the time training or supporting [Rebecca] for what she needed.”

Near Rebecca’s due date, the preseason matches began, with Brandt traveling to Florida for preseason matches then flying back before his wife went into labor.

“I think preseason matters in that you need to get fit if you didn’t come and fit already,” said Brandt. “You’re trying to get more match fit than just going outside and running and doing suicides all day. It’s about creating habits you want to keep for the season, those good habits, those goal scoring habits, right?”

After Rebecca gave birth in early February, Bronico scored three goals in his next preseason matches. Was it new dad energy?

“You have that little little bit of dad power, dad magic,” said Brandt. “It’s just [a] different perspective, different purpose, in life as a whole.”

Bronico isn’t the only one with new responsibilities at home. New star Wilfried Zaha’s daughter, Zuri, was born in late February, and midfielder Djibril Diani’s son Ismaël was born during Ramadan.

After Zaha returned from his daughter’s birth in London, he scored his first goal for the club on March 1, making it back in time to help Charlotte FC dispatch Atlanta United 2-0. The former Premier League star has made multiple trips between Charlotte and London in the month since to see Zuri and his wife, Paige.

“It [was] non-negotiable, being there for my daughter’s birth,” said Zaha after scoring the goal. “And at the same time, work is work.”

When Nerve asked if there was any “new dad energy” behind Zaha’s Man of the Match performance, he replied, “Yeah, 100%,” struggling to fully describe how much his daughter’s birth meant to him.

“I do this for my family. I do this for my kids,” said Zaha. “Having my daughter … I don’t know, I can’t explain it. It was just a very good moment for me [that] I managed to witness that.”

“He’s used to ‘dad power,’” Bronico said of Zaha.

Despite the preseason goals, Bronico would have to wait to get his first official “dad goal” during Charlotte’s 4-1 rout of the San Jose Earthquakes on March 22. In the second half of the match, Charlotte FC midfielder Pep Biel found Bronico at the top of the penalty box.

Despite San Jose’s goalkeeper sliding straight at him, Bronico was able to chip the ball over the goalie, jump over the keeper as well, and land a second touch that put the ball in the back of the net.

After throwing off his shirt in celebration, Bronico ran to the eastern corner of the pitch, making a baby-rocking motion with his arms in front of the cameras. Though it was Bronico’s first shot in six appearances this year, his patience had paid off.

“It feels great, for sure, the dad strength is paying off,” said Bronico.

Proving everyone wrong

At Charlotte FC head coach Dean Smith’s press conference in advance of Charlotte’s home opener, he explained that he left Bronico out of the starting lineup because of the way Seattle plays.

Bronico usually plays as a “six” — a defensive midfielder — alongside Westwood. Smith wanted two “eights” — center midfielders — in the Seattle match, so he went with new signee Eryk Williamson and returning player Pep Biel at the six, with the captain as the lone eight.

“[Brandt] is going to have to compete with three to four different players [for a starting spot],” said Smith. “I’ve certainly got depth in the squad at midfield.”

In his playing days, Smith also had a dad goal. Just three days after his son Jamie was born, he converted a penalty during Leyton Orient’s 8-0 blowout of Doncaster Rovers.

“A [new child] should give give [Zaha and Brandt] a lot of energy, that’s for sure,” said Smith. “And cost them a lot of money over the years.”

Read more: Getting to Know Charlotte FC Head Coach Dean Smith (2024)

Perhaps that was Dean Smith’s way of saying that for the home opener – a 2-0 win over Atlanta United – Brandt would be back in the starting 11.

“You know that he just finds a way to get in the game,” said Marks. “Different managers at different times have maybe tried to put him out, and he always fights his way back in. He’s just such a hard worker, and I think he’s a testament to [the idea that] ‘winners win,’ at the end of the day, regardless of the circumstances they put themselves in … he always helps the team in whatever role he’s asked to do.”

With the exception of Charlotte’s season opener in Seattle, Brandt Bronico ended up starting all of the club’s first six matches — a testament to how his game has matured and evolved to keep up with a more competitive league.

“MLS is 10 times better, in terms of competition, now than it was at the beginning of my career,” said Bronico. “I came into the league, I got drafted in 2017, and [MLS] was good, but you can see [now] there is so much more quality; there’s so much more, money being invested into top players around the world. There’s a lot more interest from players around the world to come over to the MLS where the quality has grown exponentially over the course of the past nine, 10 years.”

After getting the start in the second match, Bronico felt good to be back home in front of Charlotte’s fans — even if he left the pitch with a yellow card instead of a goal contribution.

“We still have work to do, but we did a lot better than we did [in Seattle],” said Bronico. “You’ve got to be physical to shut down [other teams] … I’m gonna play a physical game out there, and if I’ve gotta get a yellow I gotta get a yellow.”

As Charlotte’s captain, Westwood is not surprised at Bronico’s success.

“He’s becoming an all-round player now, which is so nice to see,” said Westwood. “And he’s still improving … he’s just a unique player and a unique character, and one we certainly think a lot of.”

Read more: MLS Awards Inspire Reflection on 2023 Charlotte FC Season (2023)

Brandt, with Rebecca’s help, has made a brand out of the “#Grindset” mindset and his “BB13” mentality, with BB13-branded merch on sale in addition to the usual team colors. The shirts and swag are reflective of Brandt’s commitment to hard work and persistence.

“I am a specialist in proving people wrong,” said Brandt. “And I will go harder for longer. And if somebody is not up to that challenge, then I will win. And that’s kind of how I look at it, because I will not give up … cause at the end of the day, it’s my life, it’s my dream.”

“You know, it’s not people’s opinions that matter to me. It’s what I wanna do for myself, and proving to myself that I can do it, and proving them that they’re wrong.”

After he scored his goal against San Jose, we asked Brandt about what he wants to achieve going forward, but his mind was still on that one original goal.

“I want to win a trophy,” said Bronico. “That’s it.”