BOB BRADLEY HAS NEVER shied away from challenges. So when the latest stop on his coaching odyssey took him to a small club in Norway, Bradley issued a challenge of his own.

Back when Major League Soccer started in 1996, Bradley was one of the few college coaches willing to forgo the security of campus life for a chance at a new adventure in pro soccer coaching. Two years later, he left a budding D.C. United dynasty, where he was an assistant, to become head coach of the expansion Chicago Fire—and promptly won both the MLS Cup and U.S. Open Cup.

In 2006, a season after winning his second MLS Coach of the Year award, he walked away from Chivas USA to accept a job as interim head coach of the U.S. national team, confident it would lead to a permanent job, which it soon did.

And perhaps most famously, late in 2011, he accepted a job as head coach of the Egyptian national team, a job that was going to be a challenge in the calmest of times, let alone in the midst of the turmoil of the Egyptian Revolution which had begun months earlier.

So in January when Bradley arrived at Stabaek, a team just promoted back to the top flight of Norwegian football, he issued his club a challenge: instead of being content to just avoid relegation, try for something more.

Stabaek's management, players, and supporters all embraced the challenge, resulting in a surprisingly strong showing for the financially strapped club. Following Sunday's season-ending 2-0 victory over Sogndal, Stabaek finished the 2014 campaign with a 11-13-6 record, good enough for 9th place in the 16-team Tippeligaen. Stabaek also reached the semifinals of the Norwegian Cup.

“A lot of teams come up from the lower division and play like they’re afraid. They just hope they can survive enough games, tie enough games, and somehow stay up,” Bradley told American Soccer Now after Sunday's season finale. “I just never felt that was a winning philosophy. It isn’t conducive to building a successful mentality. It doesn’t develop players and is not what you need to do as a club to create excitement and a winning environment.

“I had to try and convey an idea about how to go about this and one of the most important things was when we set out, we spoke to the players about how we’re going to train, how we’re going to compete and prepare to play the right kind of football and find a way to play positive football, go forward when we have the ball, play a good tempo, play hard.”

Feeding off Bradley’s confidence, Stabaek burst out of the gates to a surprising 6-4-0 record after the first one-third of the season. But Bradley’s philosophy was tested when his team went winless in its next seven games, six of them losses. The slide coincided with Stabaek's sale of one of its best young players, Morten Thorsby, to Heerenveen in the Netherlands.

Typically, even when things went sour Bradley kept an even keel.

“One of the important things is to keep the same mentality and when the results do go against us the philosophy of how we do things doesn’t change," Bradley said. "When the results go against us you have to remind the players that nothing comes easy, that we’re still the same team, and we just have to keep working. Honestly, it’s no different than anything I’ve ever done."

Stabaek weathered its mid-season lull and rebounded to finish on a 4-2-4 run.

“I have always had great confidence in the way I do things," Bradley said." When I came here so many people said, ‘He shouldn’t go there, he can’t succeed at a club that small.’ But I always felt once we get going and establish what we’re going to be and how we’re going to train, the rest will take care of itself. I’ve been in enough situations where I’ve been tested and challenged and so when you face different situations with your club, like we did here, and the players see how you react and go about things, it gives them an indication his way is the right way to do it.”

Because of how Stabaek exceeded expectations and how it played, Bergens Tidende, one of Norway’s largest daily newspapers, named Bradley coach of the year. Bradley downplayed the honor, instead citing the feedback he got from opposing players and coaches.

“You know me, (awards) like that don’t mean much,” Bradley said. “For me, the best part of all this was, among players in other teams, among coaches and football people in Norway, not only were they surprised at the results, but there’s been a positive buzz about the team, how we played, and how our young guys have grown. That’s the part that’s important because it shows the quality of work we put in every day.”

With his first season behind him, Bradley is already looking for ways to take Stabaek to the next level. The club finished 11 points from qualifying for a spot in the Europa Cup and making a leap to compete with Norway’s bigger clubs will require a financial commitment from the club’s board of directors.

It’s not impossible—between 2007 and 2009 the team finished in the top three each year and won the league in 2008—but that’s when it was backed by wealthy Norwegian businessman Kjell Christian Ulrichsen, the club’s former chairman.

When the global financial crisis hit, Ulrichsen’s football philanthropy waned and the club was forced to sell off most of its top players in 2011 and 2012—factors that led directly to the club being relegated. While Stabaek reportedly stopped the financial bleeding, its home arena, Nadderud Stadion, holds only 7,000, making it one of the smallest in the Tippeligaen and the sort of venue that doesn’t provide for the biggest player budget.

“The biggest question now within our club is can we build on this season or are we going to continue to just make moves to just try and keep our head above water,” Bradley acknowledged. “Almost everything we’ve done so far has been from the B- and the C-list. We’ve never been able to go to A-list. Now we go to the board and our chairman and sporting director to try and speak about the structure of the club to establish where we can go from here. But we’re already in discussions about how to make the team better.”

The level of player will likely depend on the player budget but Bradley is hoping to take advantage of his contacts in the United States and Egypt to bring some talent to Scandinavia. He also plans to reach out to European clubs he developed relationships with when he was evaluating players as U.S. national team coach.

While Bradley knows Stabaek won’t win many bidding wars, he hopes he has created an environment that will draw interest from players looking for a chance to improve.

“Even within the Tippeligaen we’re not able to compete with Rosenborg and the bigger clubs for player salaries," Bradley said. "But any time you do well by young players, there’s a lot of word of mouth and they tell other players and word gets around.

"The quality of work you do every day, the quality of training, how you treat them, how they grow and develop. People see the kind of football you play and those kinds of things attract other players, both here in Norway and outside it. There were three or four situations at the end of the season where after games we were walking off the field and players form the opposing team said, 'We enjoy watching your team.' When word like that gets out, you hope that helps.

“We had a Ghanaian player, Enoch Kofi Adu, on a six-month loan here. He had played with Michael Parkhurst at Nordsjaelland (in Denmark), and I saw him there when I scouted Michael for the national team. He transferred to Brugge but wasn’t getting a lot of games so we brought him here and he was able to use his time here to transfer to Malmo—and now he’s playing in the Champions League. There’s another good young Ghanaian player at Nordsjaelland we’re looking to bring in and Adu had very positive things to say about playing here.”

Bradley said Stabaek has sent a scout to the United States to look at some college players, and there’s always the possibility of adding MLS players who are out of contract and looking for European experience.

“There’s different categories of players," Bradley said. "There’s always the possibility of getting a young player either before college or coming out of college who will be interested in trying Europe first and want to come over here. We know who those guys are in the past, like Charlie Davies, like Alejandro Bedoya. There are plenty of guys like that.

“Guys at a certain point of their careers who are out of contract in MLS, those categories are still possible and we’ll be looking at some of them.”

Michael Stephens was out of contract a year ago after spending four seasons with the Los Angeles Galaxy. Stephens is two years younger than Bradley’s son, Michael, the U.S. international and Toronto FC midfielder, but they both played for the Chicago Sockers youth club and Bradley thought he’d be a great fit at Stabaek.

“I’ve known Mike since he was 10," Bradley said. "With the Sockers, he didn’t play on the same team (as Michael Bradley) but they worked out together, especially indoors in the winter. And I’ve known his family a long time. He’s a competitor and he loves to play and when I looked at our team and thought about how we would play and compete, I really felt like Mike Stevens could make a really positive impact for us here.

"He played every game, he hardly ever misses a training session. On the field he has good energy, works very hard for the team. And what he also was able to do was deliver some really good passes to set up good chances in goal.”

Speaking of his son, ASN asked Bradley to comment on the recent kerfuffle between MLS commissioner Don Garber and Jurgen Klinsmann after the U.S. national team coach was critical of some American players, like Michael Bradley, for leaving Europe to return to MLS.

“I have a lot of opinions about it but I’m not going to share them,” the elder Bradley said with a chuckle.

Because of his success at Stabaek—and his previous tenure with the Egyptian and U.S. national teams—Bradley knows there’s a chance bigger clubs may come calling. And while he made it clear he’s not looking to leave, it’s hard not to think he’d listen if a club with a bigger budget came along.

“I came here with the understanding that it was a two-year project and I signed a two-year deal. The way things work when the season ends is there’s a small window if someone has seen what you’ve done and they want to talk to you, it’ll happen. But I haven’t heard from anyone yet and I don’t get very far in one job if I’m always thinking about the next one."

When he was hired in January, much was made, particularly in the U.S. media, of the pioneering significance of Bradley being the first American to coach at a European first-division club. While Bradley sees some of that as “just a media thing,” he also knows he’s blazing a trail for future Americans.

“I’ve said in the past, as much as soccer has grown in the U.S., as much success as the national team has had over the years and American players have done well, American players and coaches still fight for respect every step of the way,” he said. “So if, in a small way, my being here helps the next guy, great. It’s part of seeing the game grow in the U.S. "It’s not why I’m here but you hope you help in some way.”

Brooke Tunstall is an American Soccer Now contributing editor and ASN 100 panelist. You can follow him on Twitter.