MLS Cup managers share reclamation success
Kreis, Arena both have once struggling clubs on precipice of greatness
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Bruce Arena, 58, is the second oldest manager in Major League Soccer (and only the second by a little bit.) Jason Kreis, 36, is the league's youngest pup of a manager. In fact, he's the same age as Galaxy center back Gregg Berhalter.
Their approaches to the leadership processes are night and day, too. Arena sets the standard for confident and cocksure ways. Backed by a resume packed with domestic and global achievement, he's so self assured in the ways and means that he sometimes comes across as bored with it all.
Kreis is humble and self deprecating, poking and prodding his way along like a military minesweeper, creeping forward with caution to spare. He's just now finishing his second full season as a manager, so it's no wonder there is not enough pretense in his life to fill a mini-soccer ball. Kreis is never afraid to say something like, "That's a good question, and I'm not sure I know the answer."
He talked earlier this week about reaching out habitually to other managers, including Arena, seeking ideas and direction the way a detective knocks on nearby doors when looking for clues to a crime.
But for all their vast differences, they have one fascinating similarity as it relates to Sunday's final: Both are nearing the finish line on remarkably similar (and similarly daunting) endeavors. Both have been tasked with overseeing major reclamation projects.
And both have come shining through.
The two sides clashing Sunday are taking their last steps on a climb up a perilously steep mountain, one where a certain amount of backsliding would seem inevitable. The Galaxy and Real Salt Lake were equally adrift prior to their current manager's arrival, sometimes setting notorious league standards, frequently dipping to punch-line status.
The three years after the Galaxy's 2005 MLS championship -- a title that many felt was gained by default, anyway, as there simply wasn't another side worthy of stubbornly grabbing the trophy -- the club was something of a wasteland competitively. The organization got caught up in its own net and set to floundering.
Galaxy officials got so consumed with David Beckham and all the whirl and swirl of excitement around him that they forgot the meaning and purpose of it all: to win games. The organization was a mess. The product on the field was reduced to useless spin at best, comical ineptitude at worst. It bottomed out under apathetic Dutchman Ruud Gullit, who came and went every day around The Home Depot Center like a part-timer at Starbucks rather than a relentlessly committed overseer of the league's most high-profile property.
It bottomed out when Gullit left in midseason of 2008, as the Galaxy season washed away amid defensive high jinks and a flood of goals -- L.A. allowed a league-high 62.
In came Arena, who saw the herculean task ahead: to strip bare a roster wrought with what he called fringe professional players and replace them economically with reliable parts. The problem was in the execution. He'd have to build his roster while hamstrung by two huge salaries, those belonging to Beckham and Landon Donovan.
So he hedged his bets on men he trusted, replacing the fringe element with the dependable, if older, likes of Eddie Lewis, Berhalter, Jovan Kirovski, Dema Kovalenko and others, and then by leaning carefully into the MLS SuperDraft. It worked beautifully, as we all know, and in stunningly short order. The Galaxy became the first MLS side to chop its goals allowed total in half from one season to the next. The pace of the successful reconstruction even surprised Arena.
He had cautioned that the whole thing had fallen apart over three or more years, and that it would take time to put it back together. Here, in a rare instance of humility, Arena has not been afraid to say he was wrong. "We certainly didn't think when we began the season we'd be a club that would end up in the MLS Cup," he said this week in summary.
Meanwhile, a few hundred miles east of Carson, Calif., Kreis started the 2008 season much farther along on his own reconstruction bid.
Kreis had inherited a side equally adrift. RSL had finished last once again in the West in 2006 (just barely behind the Galaxy). When the 2007 season went winless through five matches, the club dismissed its original manager, John Ellinger, and soon hired Kreis. Even though he had no managerial experience -- he had to retire suddenly as a player just to assume the post -- the organization entrusted Kreis to man the wheel and steady the listing ship.
Kreis jettisoned players he deemed not "all in," not fully committed to the team cause. Instead, he filled the locker room with character, with likeable types who would fight for each other on the field and enjoy each other off it. The talent differential might not have been vast between Ellinger's reign and Kreis' time. But the players' commitment to the greater cause (and the tactical attention to defense) appears to be a universe apart.
Talent unattached to the proper drive and purpose is a hollow endeavor -- and likely quite futile. The most useful moves arranged by Kreis and general manager Garth Lagerwey weren't the helpful acquisitions of talent players such as Jamison Olave and Nat Borchers. Those were good, solid player pick-ups, for sure. But where this club gets its edge, the added verve that pushed the men of Rio Tinto to the brink of MLS Cup 2008 and into damp and windy Seattle this year, is from Kyle Beckerman and Will Johnson.
Those two form the heart and soul of the side. Players like Borchers, Olave, Andy Williams and Javier Morales rally around that indomitable spirit, more thoroughly pouring themselves into the effort because of them.
The final product remains imperfect; RSL did, after all, have to sneak into the 2009 playoffs on a knife's edge margin. Why the middling 11-12-7 record in the first place? In large part because RSL didn't manage some winnable matches, something for which Kreis humbly takes full responsibility.
But when things got tight and the championship dream began slipping away, the character prevailed. (It did so last year, too, as a late surge just like this year's nudged Kreis' men forcefully into the 2008 playoff field.)
"When we've had our backs clearly, clearly to the wall, we've always performed," Kreis said.
Of course, everyone's back is up against the wall in the playoffs, a ruthless process that systematically terminates the weak or unlucky with extreme prejudice. So, evidence is building that Kreis is right, that his side is better than others when its all about raw survival. RSL was the better team last year against Chivas USA and then against the New York Red Bulls, even if the result left everyone shaking their heads. This year, his club was better than Columbus and more worthy than Chicago.
There's one game to go before the Real Salt Lake reclamation project is complete. Of course, the same can be said for the Galaxy, who might be dealing with a shorter window of opportunity.
The roster at RSL doesn't seem bound for significant offseason turnover, although Yura Movsisyan has already stamped his passport for Europe. And a few sides from overseas may come kicking the tires on Robbie Findley. Otherwise, Kreis should be able to keep the course already charted.
The Galaxy? Who knows what will happen with Donovan, who has accomplished just about all there is to accomplish in domestic soccer. Beckham has pledged his allegiance, although the Galaxy won't see him in 2010 until after the World Cup. And old war horses such as Lewis, Kirovski and Chris Klein won't last forever.
Arena seems destined to deal with some roster change, one way or the other. What he does remains to be seen. But we know a lot about how he'll go about it ... with a brazen bravado. And we know this, too: his methods are sure to look a lot different than the guy on the other bench Sunday.
Steve Davis is a freelance writer who has covered Major League Soccer since its inception. Steve writes for www.DailySoccerFix.com and can be reached at BigTexSoccer@yahoo.com. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author's, and not necessarily those of Major League Soccer or MLSnet.com.
