It’s been a harrowing first four months to the MLS season and Real Salt Lake is in position to contend in the Western Conference at 7-8-2 through the first 17 matches. With 17 matches left on the regular season calendar, we took the opportunity to catch up with RSL General Manager Craig Waibel about his assessment of the club through the first half and what to expect from the second half.
Q: What is your impression of what you saw over the first 17 games?
Waibel: I think I saw exactly what I anticipated which was a whole lot of young players maturing. In that process, we’ve had some remarkably talented performances from our young players. That kind of tells the tale of the tape so far. Like every other MLS team, we had a little spell with injuries for about four weeks where coaches didn’t really have a lot of selection. We’re about where I thought we’d be right now. I thought we’d be somewhere between fourth and eighth by mid-year. As we watch our guys mature over the next few months with all this experience they’ve gained, I think the youth starts to support the veteran leadership with more quality. I think we’re exactly where I thought we’d be. I’d like to have a few more wins and a few less losses, but we’re still within an arm’s reach of the leaders and that’s where we wanted to position ourselves.
Q: There seem to a be a few games where it feels like the team is right on the cusp of having a breakthrough on the road.
Waibel: We’ve had a couple of those games on the road. Against the Galaxy, we played a good 50-55 minutes … goal against and then we saw a big dip from our youth. The mentality, the maturity weren’t quite there yet. But that’s part of who we are and part of what we’re embracing. For some, it’s frustrating. For me, it’s frustrating. For the players, it’s frustrating. They know it’s a matter of getting these experiences as well. We saw it at Columbus – poor first half, good second half. Orlando was a good first 60 minutes, bad last 30. LA was a good first 50 minutes, bad last 40. Those are just a few examples of a young team maturing. What you’ve seen so far is at home, these young guys are confident and always have the crowd behind them and our record is nearly the exact opposite. We’re seeing a very home-heavy mentality. That actually is fairly predictable with a young team. Until they wake up – and these moments happen differently for everybody – and go ‘I deserve to be here, I deserve what I’ve worked for and I deserve to win games,’ … at home the mentality is much different and we’re in the process of that maturation and the staff is doing a good job of fostering it. Now it just has to take hold and these young men have to become men.
Q: When you look at some of the young guys that have stepped in – Baird is the leading-scorer among rookies, Bofo has stepped in and contributed a lot over the last month or so, Brooks has moved to right back and made that position his own, Acosta looks like he’s back where he was last year. What can you say about the young players and what they’ve done to help steer this team in the right direction?
Waibel: I think those are really good examples of guys that we’re talking about bits and pieces of playing well. None of them have really hit their stride where they are at their peak each game. We’re still teaching them how to be pros and it’s important for everyone to remember that there is a maturity process in building a roster, building a team and believing in youth. Lost in that sometimes is that our right winger is still 21 years old. Our attacking midfielder is still 24 years old. It’s a young team with some really good leadership sprinkled in. When they all play together and all play well on the same night, we’re a really difficult team to play against and a really difficult team to beat because the veterans we have – when these young men all play well on the same night – the veterans can just lead the ship which is their strengths. We’re a young team and it doesn’t get discussed enough. We have to give these guys the time to grow and they are. I don’t think many people understand the amount of games this group has won in the last 12 months. That’s half of one season and half of another so it gets lost in the shuffle, but we’re on the right path. We certainly have a very talented group. I think we’re one or two key pieces away from being consistently in every game for 90 minutes, but one of those two pieces is not a player – it’s maturity and experience.
Q: How beneficial is it then to have Nick and Kyle there – two guys who have been through it and can steer them through some of those difficulties?
Waibel: That’s certainly the job of a veteran. As you get older sometimes your job is to wind the guys up and sometimes your job is to calm the guys down. That’s what being a veteran is – it’s having the experience to lead the group and some of the young guys who are wide-eyed. We still have a little ways to go, but Nick and Kyle have done a great job of leading this group so far. To turn that corner we need them to be consistent, as they’ve been. I compliment both of those guys because they are proven veterans, they’ve represented their country and yet they’re both showing a great amount of patience to have this young talented group grow around them. You can see it in their body language. When all the young guys play well and we click, you can watch the young guys form their performances around those two and you can also sense the pride those two guys have in being a part of the project and part of the club and part of the growth. This team is on the right path for success and it has been for a little while. In there you’ve got some bumps, but I think our team understands who they are. They’re a young team and they don’t get down when we don’t perform well. It could be a matter of four days before we have a great game and they don’t get too high. The guys have enough experience now to know that simple lesson where we don’t have to address the poor performances as often and let’s get more consistent. That’s the goal for every player and the staff.
Q: One of the more prominent offseason additions was Damir Kreilach. What has he brought to that equation?
Waibel: Damir is another consistent pro. He’s very dangerous running with the ball. His final pass is good. He strikes a good ball on goal. He’s better higher up the field than deeper. He was an attacking midfielder before we brought him here to play as a box-to-box midfielder. He brings a professional attitude, a professional mindset in the way he treats his body and the way he trains and everything that goes along with that. He’s just another great example in the locker room. And then his defensive energy is great. We’ve had discussions with the staff where everyone’s strengths and weaknesses are showing and we know where everyone is. Get Damir higher up the field and we’ll be more effective and I think that’s what we’ll continue to see from him.
Q: What do you want to see from this group in the second half?
Waibel: Just consistency. You’re always going to win games and you’re always going to lose games. The biggest thing for me is that we need to stop conceding silly goals. We’ve conceded 32 goals and there are probably 12 that you want back. There are eight that there is no way should have happened. Consistency on the defensive side – and you can go back through our results … when we play a good defensive game, we do quite well. And that’s not to oversimplify and say that if you don’t get scored on you’ll find success. But when we’re organized defensively from the forward all the way back and we’re organized and we’re tight and we transition quickly into our attack and we possess in the other team’s half because of our defensive starting positions, we’re very good. The consistency of where we are defensively and most importantly the individual decisions we are making defensively, be it wingers tracking or in some cases not tracking runners all the way back to our backline and the individual decisions they are making 1v1. That’s the biggest thing we have to clean up and again we’re right back to the topic of young men learning to become consistent pros.
Q: One of the elements is that they’re not just young, but take Brooks, Danny and Corey, they are also playing in positions that may not be their most familiar …
Waibel: For Danny it’s his most familiar at this point because that’s where we’ve played him in the last couple of seasons. With Brooks and Corey … Corey has usually played underneath in a midfield role and Brooks has usually played as a winger. But they’re learning on the fly. When guys become real pros – not just on a roster, but when they are finding the field – if you go back through and ask every pro if they played the position they came to their team playing … I mean I certainly didn’t. I went from playing center back to right back. Attacking mids usually come and play attacking mid. Strikers usually play striker. Other than that, you get into the channels and across the backline and you play where the coach tells you to and you just try and do it well. These guys are doing a great job of learning their roles and I think as long as we continue to develop them in their soccer but also psychologically, then we will continue to make progress. We have to give these kids the ability to grow within the system that exists now. We are a very youth-driven club and we want to keep the core of our group together as much as possible over an extended period of time, but the flipside of that is we have to let them accomplish things, we have to let them soak in defeat and we have to let them grow. And we have to make sure as a club that we keep supporting their growth because we are in a spot now where if the season ended halfway through, we’d be in the playoffs. Then if you take the last 12 months, we are considerably higher. So it’s just a matter of maintaining this growth. One thing we have to recognize as well is the league is getting better and there is tons more money being spent in the league and if you get those players right, it certainly makes a big difference.
