Real Salt Lake Looks to Keep the Band Together for 2010 MLS Season

A candid interview with the General Manager of Real Salt Lake

Real Salt Lake pulled off one of the biggest upsets in professional sports, coming from the number eight-seed in Major League Soccer’s post-season, to win the 2009 MLS Cup. En route to its first MLS Championship, RSL had to beat the defending champion Columbus Crew and the surging Chicago Fire on consecutive road trips. Finally, RSL took on and defeated a star-studded LA Galaxy team, headlined by David Beckham and Landon Donovan. This was no easy task, squeeking into the playoffs, and then facing three tough teams with internationally known “designated players”. However, upstart RSL, a team with no designated players, was up to the task and came out MLS champions.

The origin of RSL’s success was not random. RSL had a plan to build a team a different way: Not to go after highly paid designated players, but to spread the money around the field and build a deep, interdependent team. The architects of that plan were two men in their first management roles: Jason Kreis and Garth Lagerwey.

Everyone knows Jason Kreis, young, stoic and visible coach of RSL, but the other key builder of RSL, is less visible. Garth Lagerwey, a 37 year-old former MLS goalkeeper turned attorney, was a crucial player in RSL’s success. Just after the start of the 2007, RSL owner, Dave Checketts, took a risk on the untried team of Lagerwey and Kreis. In two short years Lagerwey, in his role as General Manager and Vice President of Soccer Operations, and Kreis, as RSL Head Coach, have accomplished a tremendous feat, taking an “also-ran” MLS team to the top of the league.

Soccer Hype recently sat down with Garth to discuss what RSL accomplished in 2009, and where the team hopes to go in 2010 as they defend their MLS Cup and play in the CONCACAF Champions League for the first time.

Soccer-Hype’s, Rocky Cole: During the regular season, Real Salt Lake had one of the best records at home, yet had a tough time on the road. Then, your road-wins in the playoffs carried the day. Do you think that you guys finally crossed that hurdle of knowing how to win on the road?

Garth Lagerwey: Yes, we definitely crossed the road rubicon, and hopefully we’re never coming back. It was definitely rewarding to see the guys step up when they had to, and when we knocked off the defending champs – coming back from two goals down – we knew we could do pretty much anything.

Then to win on the road in Chicago, and against LA on the road, although at a neutral site, we have cleared that mental hurdle. I hope that will point us towards a more consistent performance over the course of the entire next season.

RC: This will be RSL’s first year competing in CONCACAF Champions League, along with it being the Seattle Sounders first year, Columbus and LA being the other two teams in CONCACAF play… How will the addition of these highly competitive games alter your off-season acquisition strategy and training, or will it change it?

GL: We think we have a good basic team structure… From a salary cap perspective, our basic philosophy has been to spread our money all over the field. We did not go out and get any players that cost a million dollars, but we spent our money on fifteen or sixteen players.

That depth that we went for really showed itself in the playoffs. Especially in the final when we had two of our best players go off injured, Will Johnson and Javier Morales, and we had Clint Mathis and Ned Grabavoy that could immediately step in and fill the void, and do so in really solid fashion.

What changes with Champions League play is now we have to go from 15 to 16 solid guys to 19 or 20 that can play at that high level. Now, hopefully, some of that is accomplished by the improved performance of some of our young players. We have some talented young guys that just haven’t gotten in a lot of games.

We certainly need to continue our model of trying to spread our cap-money over a number of spots, so that we have the depth to survive the season. You can’t be playing in MLS every Saturday, and then be traveling to Central America and the Caribbean, mid-week and then come back to play an MLS game on Saturday at a high level… you are going to have to rotate players.

RC: I have read that RSL is trying to keep much of the squad together, to include Robbie Findley and Kyle Beckerman, and I just saw a that you locked down Fabian Espindola. How are your efforts going to keep the core of what you had this season, and is keeping the team together a major priority?

GL: Keeping the team intact is our top priority. We built a team that reached the conference final in our first year [of the Kreis/Lagerway era] and won the championship in our second year. Our group is a young group, and if we can keep them together over a number of years, we can be consistently competing at a high level.

We were pleased to get Espindola locked in, and players like Findley and Beckerman are our top off-season priorities… Will Johnson, probably needs to be in that conversation as well. The thing I should stress is that all of those players are under contract to us through 2010, so, none of those guys are going anywhere, but we certainly would like to tie them up long-term, and further our long-term success.

RC: You are not going to have Yura Movsisyan or Chris Seitz this year. How is the loss of those two players going to impact the team?

GL: Chris Seitz is going to have a really bright future. I think he is an excellent goalkeeper, but it was the right thing to do to give him the chance to start somewhere.

Obviously, Nick Rimando was the finals MVP, and has just been solid on goal for us the whole time that I have been here. Rimando has earned the right to be our starting goalkeeper here for an extended period. Given that set of facts, and that Chris had not counted against our pay-cap, because he was part of the Generation-Adidas program, it became difficult to have both of those cap numbers [Rimando and Seitz] count against us.

Kyle Reynish will be our backup, and we have a lot of confidence in Kyle to pick up any minutes that Chris would have been called on to play.

Replacing Yura… well, losing forwards is always difficult. We feel like Pablo Campos, who we picked up in mid season from San Jose, can come in and give us an option. But we need to get better at the forward position. It is always difficult to find good players at that position. We tried to keep Yura, but he chose to go to Europe. We will see if Robbie [Findley] has a different opinion.

RC: I know you have recruited in Argentina… you got Will Johnson from the Dutch league… where are you looking this year?

GL: We will be looking in South America, as we always do. Since I have been here we have signed players from Norway, Greece, Ukraine, Germany, Scotland, Argentina, Ecuador… the point is, we try to cast a very broad net, and have had some success in doing it.

We will continue to work our network for players. I think out of pure economics, our focus will generally end up being in South America, from the standpoint that if you looked at the same level of player in South America, he will be earning less money than in Europe, and that makes him a little more affordable for us.

RC: How important is management and owner support in what RSL achieved last year, and what you are looking to do this year?

GL: I cannot say enough about the support we get from [team owner] Mr. Checketts. He has been in sports management for 30 years at the highest levels [NBA New York Knicks and NHL New York Rangers]. He just knows everything when it comes to sports management. He created a management culture that we are able to pass on down to the team. The thing that he told both Jason [Kreis] and myself when he hired us was, I think you have some modicum of ability, some talent… but what you don’t have is experience.

We quickly learned that when you work for Dave Checketts, don’t be afraid to ask questions and don’t act like you know everything. The two guys I work for directly, Dave Checketts and Bill Manning, have about a combined 40 or 50 years of pro-sports experience. I would be a tremendous fool not to use those resources.

Mr. Checketts has created a culture at RSL where we are empowered to make decisions. He may offer advice, but we get to make the calls. This is a really great place to live in, and a really great job to have. He has allowed Jason and I to make mistakes and grow, and because of that culture, we have been able to take some chances on some players that we might not otherwise have been able to… we’ve had some really terrific successes along the way.

RC: Okay, last question, Garth. If you had one wish for player acquisition – by either position or type of player – for the coming year, what would that be?

GL: I guess that depends on how our contract negotiations go. Obviously, Findley, Beckerman and Johnson are guys we would like to keep, and keep for a long time, but if they turn us down and are not interested in what we have to offer… we’d need to go after a forward.
We have a clear preference to keep the team intact, but we have to get in under the salary cap. We are going to have to reach reasonable agreements with those guys and it is too early to say whether that is achievable or not.

The college combine is January 6th down in Florida, and the draft is January 14th in Philadelphia – right after the combine. We will be looking for good players that can fit into the team we’ve built, and we are excited about next season.

You know what, Garth… so is the rest of MLS.

This interview originally was published at www.SoccerHype.com.

Category: MLS, RSL, Real Salt Lake, Team News