The English soccer team betting on a 31-year-old coach from Houston

They wouldn’t hire someone in his 30s, because coaches that young were seen to lack the requisite gravitas. And they certainly wouldn’t hire an American—English fans simply couldn’t take them seriously.

But this summer, Brighton and Hove Albion has done both. By appointing 31-year-old Fabian Hurzeler, a Houston-born German-American, the mid-table club owned by a professional gambler is making a huge bet that the youngest manager in Premier League history can defy conventional soccer thinking and join the high-rollers of the most competitive league in the world.

“My age is a big topic, I know that," Hurzeler says. “I say I am a young man, but I am not a young coach."

He isn’t completely American either. Hurzeler’s parents are Swiss and German and happened to be living in Texas when he was born. The family left Houston when he was two and Fabian grew up outside Munich. Still, some things stuck besides a passport. Hurzeler speaks excellent, gently-accented English and was once called up by the U.S. Under-20 national team.

“I would say I have some typical attitudes of Americans," Hurzeler has said. “My character is just open-minded."

So Hurzeler is unlikely to be treated like previous American coaches in England. Three others have come before him in this league and it has rarely gone well.

Former Swansea manager Bob Bradley lasted less than half a season. Not only did results go against him, but his use of certain American soccer terms—such as “PK" for a penalty kick—turned into a constant sideshow. More recently, Jesse Marsch had a one-year stint in charge of Leeds that ended with 11 wins, 10 draws, and 16 defeats. He is now in charge of the Canadian men’s national team.

None of them, however, were also contending with the scrutiny surrounding Hurzeler’s age. At Brighton, he is younger than six members of his own squad. Hurzeler is so young, in fact, that when the Premier League was founded in 1992, he wasn’t even born.

But few people in English soccer have moved through their coaching education quicker.

As a player, Hurzeler had been a promising member of the Bayern Munich academy. But by the age of 23, he’d realized that his skills on the pitch had taken him about as far as they could. So he gave up on lofty dreams of the Champions League and instead looked way down the ladder—all the way to Bavarian amateur soccer.

In 2016, Hurzeler joined FC Pipinsried as a player-coach in the unglamorous fifth tier of the German game. The town had only 8,000 inhabitants and the stadium had just a single stand. It was the soccer equivalent of dropping into Single-A baseball—only with more lederhosen.

Pipinsried didn’t stay in the fifth tier for long. The following year, Hurzeler led the club to promotion and his reputation began to grow. Within four years, he was serving as an assistant coach at second-tier St. Pauli in Hamburg when he took over coaching duties on an interim basis. He was 29 at the time.

As it turns out, there are few places better than German soccer to be a coaching wunderkind.

This is the league that produced Julian Nagelsmann, current manager of the German national team, who was so young when he took over Hoffenheim, that he was still riding skateboards to work.

St. Pauli didn’t hesitate when it handed Hurzeler the reins full time and within a year, he repaid the club’s trust by leading a team of his peers to the Bundesliga. At no point, Hurzeler says, did his age ever undermine him in the locker room—not even when his tendency to lose his temper earned him seven yellow cards over the course of the season, according to the club.

“I make the decisions. And I have to make hard decisions that sometimes might hurt the players," Hurzeler says. “That’s why my motto is to lead with friendly authority."

Now, Hurzeler is joining a broader shift toward youth in Premier League dugouts. Last season, nine of the 20 clubs started with a manager in his 40s and one began with a 30-something. When the 2024-25 season kicks off on Friday, 12 clubs will be led by coaches under 50. That includes the two highest-profile teams to make changes this summer: Chelsea went with Italy’s Enzo Maresca from Leicester City, while Liverpool pried away Arne Slot from Dutch club Feyenoord.

At 44 and 45, respectively, they represent bold gambles for the future—even if the baby-faced Hurzeler makes them seem ready for their slippers and a cup of warm milk.

“Every year I sit here with a new manager, I get more depressed," Brighton CEO Paul Barber joked at Hurzeler’s introduction. “Younger, better looking, trendier, more articulate."

Write to Joshua Robinson at Joshua.Robinson@wsj.com