Just saw this a bit ago too. Honestly, this is genius move. Better to start HC in a lower-stakes environment than hop into an assistant role at a higher level. I think he'll get more out of it that way, and gain greater perspective. If his ambition is to coach, then it's better to make mistakes outside of the league you hope to start in.
1. Hadn't realized Maas had left UVU. Hopefully everything is ok there. He's a hell of a coach. 2. KB coaching college soccer is a weird spot, IMO, for a guy who never played in the complicated mess that is NCAA soccer 3. According to google maps, you can get from the UVU soccer field to the Provo River area in less than a half hour 4. Hopefully this creates a pipeline of sorts for the academy through UVU. Still, as we've talked about on here before, a kid who has an offer from a school like Stanford isn't going to seriously consider UVU if they care about the quality of their education
I'm a little surprised to say the least. I did not think that Kyle would ever end up in coaching. He didn't seem the type but I hope that he does well.
More like, if they care about getting interviews for future careers just because their degree came from a prestigious school, whether anything was actually learned or not.
Dude has a mouth on him. I don't even remember a game where I didn't see him at least mouth the word "F*&^%^&*&". But I can personally attest to being an entirely different human being when playing competitively vs the rest of my life.
As a UVU alumnus and a current BYU student I whole-heartedly revoke this assertion. His colorful lexicon will not be his demise.
Corey Baird scored the first goal in his first game with LAFC. He started in Rossi's usual spot out left.
He looked a lot like he did last year for us - lots of attempted passes into packed defenses and behind runners - and he scored off of a deflected shot. I would have liked to see how having Vela on the field would have opened space for him, but in a weird moment around the 20th minute Vela felt a twinge lunging for a ball, indicated to the bench he wanted a trainer to come look at him, and was promptly subbed out. He was clearly unhappy about it.
The whole KB5/RSL/UVU thing really escalated this week. (Based on the most recent Reality Check podcast)
KB did an interview with Spence in which he ripped RSL on some things. For example, he said the women’s team at UVU has much better video support operations than RSL. He said he begged for video support for years at RSL. Also, they discussed the difference in the stories given by KB and RSL on why he isn’t on the RSL staff. All of them (Dunny, Trey, Spence) speculated that KB wasn’t going to accept anything less than Head Coach at RSL. They also speculated that he took the UVU job to prepare for returning to RSL as HC in the future.
Spence: What’s going on with the Front Office? Why can’t they get ahead of something like this benefits it goes public? Dunny: Maybe KB didn’t want to cooperate.
TBH, I think the UVU opportunity is a much better situation for KB than anything he would have landed at RSL in the short run. Now if he's dissing on some particulars of the club resources, that may be a bit juicy, but in the grand scheme of things not all that meaningful or even surprising. DLH was all about the sizzle, but there were a lot of fundamentals behind the scenes that were neglected. This club has always been on a shoestring budget in many key areas that matter. That's not a secret to anyone "in the know" around the club.
I will have to listen to this but reading between the lines it sounds like there was quite a bit of friction between Kyle and perhaps the HC along with others last season. My mind immediately thought, "oh, so that's why Freddy couldn't figure out how to get Kyle to 500 games". Makes total sense now.
The Kyle interview isn't all that bad towards RSL. The video review stuff was a swipe at the club, no doubt, but Spence asked the "why aren't you with RSL?" question at the very end and KB didn't really offer more than just "the job I wanted wasn't open". KB's story was essentially that he was enjoying his time away from the game and then was contacted by UVU for the role. It was a really accelerated timeline to get him hired and I wouldn't fault RSL all that much for not having a "counter offer" of sorts. It sounded like KB wanted to be a head coach at RSL so he was just laying in wait. Not a lot of ill will towards the club, at least from what I heard in his comments, about that.
This is interesting to contrast against what Saucedo said about RSL's facilities in comparison to what he'd seen at Liga MX.
I wonder how much of KB's gripe with the lack of video review/analysis was driven by Freddy/coaching staff. I find it really hard to believe that RSL doesn't have the means to do video review - hell, most high school football programs in this state do - but some coaching staffs just dont value it. Still, if the captain of the team - a guy who has spent a good chunk of time playing for the national team - is calling for an enhancement, you might want to listen to it. Especially if you're as green of a coach as we've had since... well ever.