Real Shakeup in Major League Soccer

It didn't seem like it would go this way, what with Freddy Adu coming to Utah this summer to play for Ellinger, his longtime coach of the U.S. Under-17 National team and his friend and mentor. Real Salt Lake of Major League Soccer headed into its third season with more promise than ever, having had the leading scorer in the league suited up and ready to play, as well as MLS' all-time leading scorer. Two early ties against solid teams seemed to point to RSL going in the right direction.

But a blowout loss to Chivas USA coupled with a second-half collapse earlier this week versus hated rival Colorado signaled the end of the John Ellinger era, seemingly, four games into the season. A Web site, called

The person creating the Web site must have known something we didn't, because according to Checketts at yesterday's press conference, the idea of having Kreis as head coach came about months ago, though Kreis was first approached by Checketts at the owner's mountain retreat in Kamas on Tuesday evening, the same day the Web site was created.

The reason for the change, said Checketts is that the results didn't come as expected--and Ellinger took the fall. Though it was widely viewed as an organizational set of blunders, it always seems that one or two people end up taking the blow the hardest. Ellinger has since been reassigned as the team's technical director and director of youth development.

Then another shocker took place when Checketts ordered general manager Steve Pastorino to fire Ellinger Wednesday. Pastorino refused, instead sending in his own resignation via E-mail. That touched off a firestorm of events, culminating with Wednesday's announcement of a press conference for Thursday introducing Kreis as the new head coach, though Kreis has zero coaching experience at the professional level--or at any level.

That didn't stop Peter Nowak from doing something similar at D.C. United after a long and storied career in Europe and after several years with Chicago, but not everyone making the jump from player to coach has had Nowak's level of success (Nowak is currently on Bob Bradley's staff with the senior U.S. National team).

For sure nobody is to say what kinds of success will befall Kreis, yet one thing is certain: mediocrity is not an option. Some heads will likely roll and Adu was surprisingly absent at the press conference. Listen to the press conference here: www.firejohnellinger.com, even popped up the day after the Colorado disaster.

Sources: Real Salt Lake Media Relations http://www.aylsoccer.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=216&Itemid=10077