Steve Goff is reporting the following: --Pastorino is resigning --Ellinger is being fired --Jason Kreis is retiring and will be the team's next coach. My take (reading between the lines): --Checketts told Pastorino to fire Ellinger. --Pastorino wouldn't and thus resigned. Checketts then fires Ellinger. --There is no reasonable assistant candidate and Kreis (who is playing out of position anyway, had said this was his last season as a player and has put down roots in SLC) retires early to be the coach. Also, this makes the "trade an allocation for Kreis" deal look even stupider. That allocation provided basically 5 games from Kreis if he's retiring.
There's a whole heck of a lot more to this story that I don't see anyone has picked up on. When they do the announcement (should be about 2pm ET), y'all are going to be completely shocked. There's an entire closet full of shoes dropping today in Utah.
that dynamic link will relate to future stories with time. direct permalink to the big_rsl_shakeup: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/soccerinsider/2007/05/big_rsl_shakeup.html
Wow. Just freaking wow. If Goff is right, that's awesome. Not that I am dancing on Pastorino and Ellinger's graves or anything, but to see a team take a step like that and give a well-respected player the chance to move into coaching would be an incredible story. And if Trey moves up to GM, that would be cool.
Agreed. That's just awesome, awesome news if true. Condolences though to Pastorino, who seems like a generally good guy.
"Why the hell didn't they make me player coach?" Who knows, maybe he gets along great with Jason. Maybe Kreis will be his favorite coach ever.
Either dish on some of the closet's supposed contents or go away. Your post implies insider knowledge. If so, please proove it because (i) dropping those kind of hints and running is rude and (ii) it worked, my curiosity is fully piqued, I'm drooling to know
I think hiring Kreis is a bad move. After the debacle with Ellinger, they should go out and hire a coach who is a proven commodity in MLS. Kreis has no head coaching experience at all. Many good players have been awful coaches.
Utah sports radoi is reporting that Ellinger will be the new GM in Charge of Soccer Operations and Kreis will retire/become new head coach. Press conference at 2pm EST.
Who do you have in mind? Rongen, Hudson, Dir, Gansler, Andrulis... None of these would tickle my loins if I were a RSL fan. And many good players have been good coaches. What's the point?
The league stated two years ago that the Preki retirement allocation was the final one of those, and the only reason they grudgingly gave that was because Kansas City had acquired those rights in the original "Preki to Miami" trade.
My bitterness toward DC has been replaced by pity. Looking back, Adu has underperformed and Chad Marshall can't beat out Ezra Hendrickson. (FWIW, Clarence Goodson has been our best defender so far this season.)
Don't lump Dir in there with Andrulis. Dir knows Adu from the U-20s....is a goalkeeping specialist....and was let go from Dallas because he couldn't get the team past the second or third round of the playoffs. His teams never missed the playoffs, and were pretty fun to watch.