A potential USMNT manager goes back to work in MLS
Jason Kreis is employed once again.
Once one of the most promising young managers in the American game, the 43-year-old was announced as Orlando City Soccer Club’s new head coach on Tuesday, 13 days after the Major League Soccer team fired Adrian Heath following months of speculation.
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“We are very excited that we have got our man. Jason is a progressive thinking and highly ambitious coach, who is very familiar with success in MLS,” club president, founder and minority owner Phil Rawlins said in a statement. “Jason’s playing philosophy is the same attack-minded, possession-oriented style of soccer that we have built our club around. He is a winner who checks all the boxes for us.”
“Jason flew to Portugal and we met for several hours,” added chairman and majority owner Flavio Augusto da Silva. “I feel very strongly that he can bring us to the next level of development as a club, a higher level.”
Heath had been in charge of the club since 2008, back since their founding as the Austin Axtex down in the USL minor league division. He followed the club to Orlando and hung around when it became an MLS team last season. He won the USL twice and got an expansion team close to the playoffs in 2015. But it had become apparent that the owners’ vision of a modern and swashbuckling side was seen as incompatible with the skill set of the long-time Premier League midfielder – who played for Stoke City, Everton, Aston Villa, Manchester City, Burnley and Sheffield United from 1979 through 1997.
Kreis, for his part, had been a tenacious forward from MLS’s inaugural season – the first man to score 100 goals in the league – and progressed smoothly into Real Salt Lake’s managerial job when he retired. In spite of being only 34, he immediately turned an aimless club around. He twice got RSL to the MLS Cup final, winning it once, before taking on a new challenge with New York City FC last year.
But in the turmoil of an expansion team seemingly hell-bent on making every mistake MLS teams have historically learned not to make – namely, signing aging star players first and then filling out a team around them with whatever money happens to be left – he, too, fell short of reaching the playoffs and was dismissed.
Since then, Kreis has occasionally been seen as an assistant coach to United States men’s national team manager Jurgen Klinsmann.
His return to management portends good things for the American game, as one of its most talented managers is no longer idle. He’d been linked to the Seattle job as well, where the incumbent Sigi Schmid faces stormy weather after his high-profile and high-priced Sounders sagged to the bottom of the Western Conference. Kreis was apparently also a candidate for the position at 2017 expansion team Atlanta United.
Insofar as such a thing exists, Orlando City has been considered to be in quasi-crisis for some time now, with the club’s general manager and chief soccer officer leaving in the offseason. The firing of Heath only compounded things, as has a 4-5-10 start to the season.
But Kreis seems to line up exactly with what the team wants: ambitious soccer that highlights technical players like Brazilian superstar Kaka. He surely got reassurances over control and immediate expectations. And the fit could be exciting, as he will oversee a team that’s grown deep and talented, blending promising North American players with veterans from oversees.
Chiefly, however, a potential future national team coach is back to work. And if he succeeds in Orlando, he could very much be in line for the job whenever Klinsmann leaves it.
