After seven years rewriting what was thought possible in MLS, two of the league’s visionaries split off onto different roads. One went east with a new project, determined to mimic his past success by building from the ground up. A year later, the other went west to bolster an established organization with roots already plunging deep into the heart of the league.
Real Salt Lake was the launch point, and Jason Kreis and Garth Lagerwey were the visionaries. At the end of the 2013 season, Kreis left his post as RSL’s Head Coach for the same position at NYCFC, where he formulated his approach for a year before embarking on the team’s expansion campaign earlier this season. A year after Kreis left, Lagerwey went the opposite direction and took over as Sounders FC’s General Manager & President of Soccer.
On Sunday, the organizations the two men now represent clash on the field for the first time since both left RSL. When Sounders FC visits NYCFC at Yankee Stadium, it’ll feel like a homecoming for both.
“We chatted this week, and it’ll be good to see him, to see his family,” Lagerwey said of Kreis. “We’ve obviously known each other a long, long time, and CJ [Brown] and Miles [Joseph], the two top assistants there worked for me, in Miles’ case for five-six years, and CJ three-four years. I know that staff really well and believe they know how to teach and coach the game. I feel really lucky at the same time to work with a great staff here. It’ll be great to see those guys.”
With Kreis pulling the strings on the field level and Lagerwey yanking them from 40,000 feet, RSL became a small-market machine with big-market aspirations. To this day, the 2011 RSL team is the only U.S.-based MLS team to make a CONCACAF Champions League Final (since they tournament changed name and format in 2008). That came just two years after RSL won its first and only MLS Cup in 2009. Through Lagerwey’s intimate knowledge of MLS’s tricky acquisition system and Kreis’ pragmatically successful tactical approach, the two helped RSL cut through MLS like warm butter. While Lagerwey helped bring in cornerstone players like Alvaro Saborio and Javier Morales, Kreis coached them up.
In the three seasons RSL existed before the Kreis/Lagerwey era, the club was 21-50-23 and missed the playoffs all three years. Between 2008-2013, the two guided RSL to an 84-58-61 record, six playoff berths and an MLS Cup. The foundation the two helped set was so sturdy that even under new head coach Jeff Cassar in 2014, RSL still went 15-8-11, finished third in the Western Conference and made it to the Western Conference Semifinals.
Needless to say, the two know each other well. From a tactical standpoint, that helps Sounders FC know what to expect to some degree. Lagerwey is plenty familiar with Kreis’ predicament at NYCFC, because the two were in the same place with Real Salt Lake in at the beginning of the 2008 transfer window, the pair’s first together at RSL. They ended up turning over 75-percent of the roster over the next three transfer periods, and Kreis’ current NYCFC roster is facing some similar familiarity issues.
That could help explain why Kreis at least partially surrounded himself with ex-RSL players in New York. In the offseason, Kreis went after Kwame Watson-Siriboe, Josh Saunders, Sebastian Velasquez, Chris Wingert and Ned Grabavoy. Each of those players has had some part to play in NYCFC’s season so far.
“I see the game a lot of the same way he does, that if you possess the ball and move it around, it’s fun to watch and fun to play,” Lagerwey said. “It’s entertaining, attacking, it’s all those things. I think over time his team will look like that. My impression is that the folks at Man City want it to look like that too. When you have that kind of identity, it takes time to establish that culture.”
NYCFC’s first two months certainly bear that out. The nascent club is No. 2 in MLS in short passes per game with 417, which points to Kreis’ desire to establish a clear-cut passing identity from the jump. But that’s yet to translate to goals with any consistency. With Mix Diskerud struggling to provide mega-signing David Villa final balls higher up-field, the team is 11th in the league in shots on target. As a result, NYCFC has just one win from its first eight matches, and the only team in the league with fewer goals than NYCFC’s five, the Montreal Impact, have played half as many matches.
This all makes sense to Lagerwey. Visions take time to establish, and Kreis hasn’t even had a full two months to stamp his mark. And from a tactical standpoint, he understands the challenges the Sounders face this weekend. Lagerwey recognizes Kreis’ narrow 70-yard field from the team’s earliest days at Rio Tinto Stadium in Sandy, Utah. When they opened the stadium, they did so at 70 yards since that was the size of Rice Eccles Stadium, where the team had been playing. And as to whether the team will definitively see the 4-4-2 diamond, the formation Kreis has become known for, Lagerwey knows to be more concerned with the style itself.
“I think Jason is less wed to the diamond than people think he is,” Lagerwey said. “I think he’s more wed to how he wants the game to look and how he wants to play soccer.”
While both men moved in different directions, both in terms of geography and the tasks set before them, this weekend will still be a homecoming of sorts for two men who’ve moved on to help shape the directions of two new franchises.
“It’s almost like watching your life live out in parallel with this guy who you have so much in common with and have so many common experiences with and traveled so far together,” Lagerwey said. “It’s not just the seven and a half years working together. We played for almost seven years together, so if you think about the amount of people in your life you’ve spent 15 years with where most days you’re together? That will always be a special relationship for me. I’ll always be rooting for him and the staff there.”
With the notable exception, perhaps, being this weekend.
