The Salt Lake Tribune’s Chris Kamrani and Kurt Kragthorpe have been providing great RSL coverage all week, comprehensively covering the Claret-and-Cobalt as they march towards MLS Cup 2013 at Sporting Kansas City on Saturday.
Their strong coverage continued on Wednesday, with the pair of SL Trib writers sitting down with Real Salt Lake owner Dell Loy Hansen. Kamrani wrote up Part I of II of a transcript of their interview with Hansen for SLTrib.com on Wednesday night, and he’s graciously allowed us to post a few highlights of the conversation below. Check out Part I of the transcript in its entirety here.
And if you haven’t already, make sure to check out Kamrani’s excellent stories on RSL’s 2013 re-tool and Robbie Findley and Kragthorpe’s column on RSL’s place in the Utah sports landscape.
A couple of highlights of Hansen’s interview with the pair are below:
On the status of contract talks with RSL Head Coach Jason Kreis, whom Hansen said requested to wait until the end of the season to figure out his status with the club following the pair’s last round of negotiations before the Oct. 1 Open Cup Final:
Hansen: "I trust Jason will make the very best decision for his family and what mountain he needs to climb," he explained. "He’s climbed some pretty big mountains."
"Jason is remarkable," Hansen continued. "The cool part being Jason at this point in his career, at 40, having six years to the playoffs — no one’s done more — having competed now twice for the national cup — if he wins, he’ll be one of five — you have to stand back and say, ‘What’s his next mountain?’ And I honestly think if we win, and CONCACAF [Champions League] is possible, I think that gives us a teetering edge that there’s an objective for him to accomplish.
"I think as you get to be a great man, and Jason early in his life is, you start saying, ‘What mountains are there for me to climb?’ I really think it is that — I don’t think it’s a money issue whatsoever. I think it’s what mountains can you put in front of me? Maybe one of Jason’s goals is he wants to be men’s national team coach some time. What resume do you need to build to do that? I give Jason a lot of credit, he’s very thoughtful about how he does it. He’s totally focused on the game — he’ll think about that after the game."
On his favorite story from RSL’s Western Conference Championship series second leg win at Portland on Nov. 24:
Hansen: "Nat Borchers and his beard came up to me with fire in his eyes and said, ‘I love taking a win on somebody else’s field. It was just like a Viking had come onto that field, and was not going to let it go,"
We don’t want to steal too much of Kamrani’s post, so that’s all for here. Just go read the whole thing – trust us, it’s worth the time.
