It Starts with Coaching or Kreis > Klinsmann

Jason Kreis, not Juan Agudelo or Teal Bunburry, is the future of American soccer.  While Major Leagus Soccer is right about to start next week, but in the meantime CONCACAF Champions League is up and running in the elimination stage.  The winner of the CONCACAF Champions League will go to Japan to play in the FIFA Club World Cup, a competition that an MLS team has never won, and only DC United has ever performed really well at.  Jason Kreis, the coach of Real Salt Lake, believes his team has a shot at winning CONCACAF.  And they absolutely do.

Kreis is a rareity in MLS.  He is a former player, who has transitioned succesfully into coaching.  He was a good MLS player, but not a star.  Still he has been one hell of a coach.  When he took over RSL after they snuck into the MLS playoffs, they won the whole thing.  And last year --to prove that it wasn't a fluke championship-- they almost won Supporters Shield, despite a hot start by LA.  Kreis's team has an attacking flair to it.  While everyone thinks of them as being European, they are actually very South American in style.  They are creative.  They are attacking.  They are entertaining to watch.  This is a team who went into Mexico last year, and lost to Cruz Azul 5-4, in a game they should have won.  If not for terrible refereing, RSL would have been the first MLS team to win on Mexican soil.  Against a very good Mexican team at that.  And it all boils down to the coach knowing what to take serious.

Kreis has stated that the teams goal this year is not to win MLS, not to win Supporters Shield, but to win Champions League and show well at the FIFA World Cup.  After drawing with Columbus 0-0 in the first league of their semi-final match they have their work cut out for them.  Still, it's good to see an MLS team, especially this MLS team, taking the tournament to heart.  Since Kreis took the reigns at RSL at the end of 2009 RSL has been the best team in MLS.  Better than the overhyped Red Bulls and Galaxy, and better than last years champion Colorado Rapids.  They are deep 1-18, which is rare in MLS due to salary restrictions, and they have the best American soccer coach.

Jason Kreis is the future of soccer in America.  He, not Jürgen Klinsmann,  is the guy who US Soccer should be grooming to take over the Men's National Team from Bob Bradley when the USMNT inevitably flames out in the 2014 World Cup.  Sure most USMNT supporters think that they need a European coach.  But why?  Because Europeans are good at soccer?  Is it a style thing?  Is it a scouting thing?  Kreis's team looks may play a South American style, but they are more like a European team than any other team in MLS.  And while everyone is begging for Klinsmann it must be stated that outside of one World Cup he has not done anything.  When considering that the general salary number for teams in EPL, Bundesliga, La Liga, and most other European and South American clubs range in the upper $100 millions and RSL's salary is stifled by the MLS salary cap (under $5 million), it speaks well to his coaching, and scouting, ability.  And more importantly to his knowledge of how to get the American system to work like the European and South American systems.

Hopefully RSL shows well in the second-leg against Columbus on Tuesday night and can pull out an agrigated win.  Columbus has been disassembled, and is clearly rebuilding, so of the two RSL has a much better shot at doing some damage against the 6 remaining Mexican sides.

RSL is the truth, they are what MLS can and should be.  They have used superior coaching to build a team that can compete at the highest levels of international soccer, on a Dollar Store budget.  If they can put away the Crew, and live up to what Jason Kreis has built them for, it will be a very good thing for MLS, and more importantly for Jason Kreis.