SANDY, Utah (Thursday, August 27, 2015) – Real Salt Lake Owner Dell Loy Hansen today announced the expansion of the club’s soccer operations side, promoting Craig Waibel to General Manager and expanding the duties of USL Monarchs President Rob Zarkos, now RSL’s Vice President of Soccer Administration. The duo are joined by RSL Assistant GM Elliot Fall, charged with integrating the first team’s needs with player development at the Monarchs level and with the Arizona academy and Utah youth teams, along with the implementation of a scouting network and the use of data analytics to gauge performance metrics across the competitive side of the organization.
"Craig and Rob are extraordinarily bright, successful individuals, now empowered to permeate their winning, responsible track records throughout the club," said Hansen. "By bolstering the human resources on the soccer side, Waibel, Zarkos and many others will provide the energy and vision needed to further evolve this club forward, spearheading our initiatives to keep RSL at the forefront of MLS for the foreseeable future.”
Waibel, 40, formerly served as an RSL assistant coach in 2014 and has been the club’s technical director since last December. A longtime professional defender from 1999-2010, Waibel made 156 career appearances in 11 MLS seasons, playing most of his career with the Houston Dynamo. A native of Spokane, Wash., Waibel won one U.S. Open Cup championship (2001 LA Galaxy) and four MLS Cup titles as a player, first with the 2002 LA Galaxy, then with the 2003 San Jose Earthquakes and finally in back-to-back seasons with the Dynamo in 2006 and 2007. During his 12 years as a professional, he played with the Seattle Sounders (A-League, 1999-2002), Colorado Rapids (2000), LA Galaxy (2001-2002), San Jose Earthquakes (2003-2005) and Houston Dynamo (2006-2010). Waibel was also a member of the 2000 CONCACAF Champions Cup-winning LA Galaxy side.
“I’m very appreciative of the communication and responsibility that Mr. Hansen is willing to invest in the entire Real Salt Lake soccer hierarchy,” said Waibel, a resident of Park City with his wife, Julie, and five-year old daughter, Jocelyn. “Expanding the opportunity and ability on the team side to compete in the MLS arms race requires short-term expertise and long-term planning. I am very confident RSL fans will be rewarded as we re-engineer the team operations to focus our discipline, adapt to a new world and position the Claret-and-Cobalt for perennial success.”
In addition to his success on the field, Waibel was also named MLS Humanitarian of the Year five times in his career. While with the Dynamo, he started Waibel’s Warriors and the Bald is Beautiful campaign to raise funds for Curing Children’s Cancer Fund and regularly visited the Texas Childrens Hospital Cancer Ward, ensuring that his time spent in Houston would be remembered as much for the incredible work off the field as it was for the championships he won on it.
In September, 2014, Zarkos was named President of the USL Real Monarchs, which will complete its inaugural season in the coming weeks. Prior to moving to Utah last summer, Zarkos had spent the previous five years working for Mr. Hansen as vice president of operations and in-house counsel in the Wasatch Company’s real estate side. Now a resident of Park City, where he resides with his wife and two children, Zarkos’ expertise in legal, operations and contract administration should provide an acute sharpness for the organization with Major League Soccer’s compliance guidelines, and lead the club’s strategic competitive investments.
“We will live up to our motto ‘RSL As One’ as we forge ahead to build a fully-integrated organization,” said Zarkos, whose undergraduate studies came at Western Washington University prior to his Willamette University Law career. “With improved communication and sharing greater responsibilities across the club, our team-oriented approach is expected to pay massive dividends for the sport at all levels in the great state of Utah and across the region.”
Assistant GM Elliot Fall has been a member of the organization since 2007, starting his post-University of Utah career in the club’s marketing and communication departments, the Judge Memorial High School graduate later serving as Team Administrator from 2010-14. Fall’s duties include managing salary cap and league mechanism implications, as well as immigration issues, for both RSL and Monarchs, along with fortifying the logistics and operations affecting player movement throughout Arizona and Utah organizations.
Real Salt Lake, with three points after just one game in its 2015/16 CONCACAF Champions League group, was knocked out of the 2015 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup with a Semifinal loss two weeks ago in Kansas City. In Major League Soccer action, RSL won 2-0 at home Saturday over Seattle to vault itself back into a very tight Western Conference playoff race. This Saturday night, RSL travels to face one of the West teams it is currently chasing, FC Dallas, with kickoff at 7:00 p.m. MT. Pregame for the match on ESPN 700 AM is at 6:00, while regional television coverage on KUTV.com and American Sports Network affiliates begins at 6:30 p.m. MT. Due to programming conflicts, KMYU will air the broadcast in its entirety at 10:00 p.m. MT.
