Over the past few years, Major League Soccer has undergone a facelift that has sprung the league into a new era. As the league has evolved, so too has Real Salt Lake and some of those evolutions meant changes in the front office to not just keep pace with the adaptations, but stay at the forefront.
Among those recent changes was the promotion of Rob Zarkos to Vice President, Soccer Administration. Zarkos spent the previous year as president of Real Monarchs SLC. With the USL club enjoying success on the business side and playing a role in development of young players, Zarkos will be tasked with carrying some of those successes to RSL’s technical staff, which is undergoing an expansion.
“With the way MLS is going now, we’re really seeing what we’re calling an arms race. Even despite a salary cap that’s supposed to create parity, there’s an arms race,” Zarkos said in an interview with The Bill & OC Show on ESPN 700 Friday. “There’s teams that are building new academies, teams that are building training facilities, teams that are bringing in bigger DPs. So we said ‘What do we need to do to build a robust technical department?’ We have a great GM. What do we need to support that?”
To Zarkos, a lot of the foundation for that growth is already in place. RSL has a deep-rooted residential academy in Casa Grande, Arizona, that has produced players for the professional and international ranks. With a strong core of young players in tow that have come out of that system on the first-team roster, RSL is now looking to expanding its reach to help build the club.
“We have one of the best academies in the U.S. So we have the talent coming up there that we’re developing internally. We now that middle step with the Monarchs that needs a few tweaks and recognize those this year and know what we’re going to do going forward. And then we have the first team,” Zarkos said. “I think that you’ll see us build a top-notch, world-class training facility in the near future. And then we’re also going to start building deeper relationships with worldwide teams that will help us with development and growing.”
With RSL’s expansion in the works, the club plans to continue its run that has seen it reach four tournament finals and win the 2009 MLS Cup.
“There’s going to be a pyramid in MLS, make no mistake, and we want to be one of those teams at the very top of that pyramid,” Zarkos said. “That’s the goal.”
To hear the full interview, click here.
