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Below is the 29-minute interview with new Real Salt Lake general manager Craig Waibel, transcribed and sitting at around 3,000 words worth of information and insight on his appointment, the new role, the past and the future of RSL. The third question is broken up because Waibel's response was nearly five minutes straight uninterrupted.

Waibel's appointment is the most newsworthy out of the announcement, but owner Dell Loy Hansen also shuffled around some other cards. Monarchs president Rob Zarkos was named RSL's vice president of soccer administration. As mentioned last week, the club plans to implement a scouting network and further usage of "data analytics to gauge performance across the competitive side of the organization," according to the release.

RSL assistant general manager Elliot Fall is expected to have a large role that realm of the club's development.

"Craig and Rob are extraordinarily bright, successful individuals, now empowered to permeate their winning, responsible track records throughout the club," said Hansen in a release from the club. "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 3.0."

Q&A with Waibel is up next.

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How does your role with the club change going forward?

Waibel: "There's a lot of structural changes going on. I think basically the simplest form of the change is that all of my decisions were approved through Bill, because he was the president of soccer. I believe those decisions will now be mine to make. Obviously that's a big change from the outside looking in, but truthfully, Bill always supported by decisions in the end anyway. It's really not that different. As I'm seven, eight months in, it's not like there's been a ton of decisions to make. The roster decisions were more or less done before Garth left and I came in. The one player that I was able to sign in January was Elias [Vasquez]. Other than that, the roster was kind of where it was. The transfer window came and gone, and we'll get [Juan Manuel] Martinez in here and see how he fits. If my instincts are right, this will be a really good soccer player, a really effective guy in our league. If we get that one right, we've got a few more things we have to get right in the off-season."

Twenty months ago, you were back home, assisting at your alma mater in Dec. 2013. Fast-forward now, you're the GM. That's an impressive ascent, right?

Waibel: "Very rarely does somebody accidentally stumble into this role … It's hard to know all the details, it's hard to know when I played, that I wasn't a distant player, that I spent time in the front office and I got to know how things worked and when I was coaching in college, I was still heavily-involved with the MLS, and I did pieces for the league, and even further than that, was in contact with quite a few people in MLS to come back in as a coach. That was awesome. This was always a longer-term goal of mine, because in general, if you set your goals looking down the road, sometimes that road gets shorter. That's all that happened here: My goal was to take the steps to become a head coach and then step into this role. This was always a role that I knew I would be in somewhere."

Do you embrace the pressure of this job?

Waibel: "Everybody treats it differently, right? I think the problem with talking about pressure is that it's personalized. The pressure for me is not what I think most would believe. The pressure for me is to come in, understanding the success that I've had as a player, as a coach, as a person and I'm not good at losing. This is frustrating for everyone. The pressure is simply what we put on ourselves. In the last couple of days, I've received phone calls as to congratulations and, 'What's your new title?' and this and that and my response is always the same: There's only one title in sports that matters. It's champion. Everything else is hearsay. It's here and there. I say it all the time: We're in the entertainment business. You are supposed to have an opinion about what we're doing. You're supposed to have an opinion as to whether or not we played a good game or a bad game. You're supposed to have an opinion as to whether or not you were entertained or not entertained. I spend my money to go be entertained at a lot of places and I have an opinion about every one of them. I've been to concerts where I walk away and say, 'That was a waste of money. The performance was awful.' We've had some of those this year … The pressure for me is not to ride the rollercoaster week-to-week, I'm the one who needs to be consistent in my decision-making and the fans get to have a game-by-game vision of our team. That's exactly what I do when I watch basketball, when I watch baseball, when I watch football, it's exactly what I do when I go to a movie, when I go to a concert. That's not my job here.

"My job's to control the long-term vision and plan. Fortunately slash unfortunately, it's a very, very public position. Every decision I will make will be critically viewed and fair enough. That's what it's supposed to be. I'm not going to get every decision right. Which is why we're building a support team, so I can be more consistent in our decisions. We have a core of players that have played here for a long time that are now moving on, for a number of reasons. The league's in a much different spot today than it was when that club was put together in 2007 and 2008. I played for a team very similar to that [in San Jose and Houston], where the core for the group I was with was put together in 2003 in San Jose and we took it all the way through realistically 2008 successfully. A five-to-six-year run, well into 2009, before 2010 fell apart for that core group. This isn't falling apart. This just needs to be managed differently in a world that's much different, much bigger players, much more interest from international players, much better wages. More competitive wages that attract players from all over the world. If you look at the core group that was put together, it was Americans with Javi and Sabo and Espindola. Olave was here and then gone and the reason was the salary cap and how it works. We're in a different world. We've got be more consistent, we've got to be more critical, we have to be more thorough in our homework, so when we bring guys here, we're not getting just good soccer players, we're getting good people, we're getting those guys that were part of that core that want to live in a place like Salt Lake, that want to be at a club like Salt Lake, because what we can't have is a revolving door. We're finally starting to see changes. This is the difficult part with change in sports. If you live in a city that's world-renowned, you don't have to market the same way, you don't have to do as much homework. You don't have to fulfill all of the boxes that we need to fulfill to attract the top-level players, which we're putting together, we're strategizing, we're reevaluating this is going because our roster right now is not anywhere near — if you look at it — it's nowhere near where it needs to be in order of sustainability."

Why is that?

Waibel: "I think for every good reason, this organization loyally kept a core group of players together, and they did it for the right reasons."

Would you say they kept them together for too long?

Waibel: "No, I think they did it for the right results, for the right reasons and for the right market. I think that the expansion draft forces change. Not only did it force the players we lost, but it forced a couple of other moves. In that core group of players that was here, there was no ego. It was very humble, it was very welcoming to the love of living here and the sacrifices that some of those players made financially to live here. A lot of them played for a lot less money they could've made elsewhere … loved player together so much that they individually sacrificed their own financial well-being in some instances to be a part of it. That outgrows itself. Evolution in sport is a guarantee. You will never have the same roster next year that you have this year. Guaranteed. It doesn't happen because the bottom of your roster isn't happy if they're not playing, the top of your roster is getting older and more expensive. There's a salary cap, change is inevitable. Does that mean you have to like it? No, you don't have to like it. Does that mean mistakes will be made? Absolutely. But that's where we come back to the pressure. That's on me to make sure we limit the mistakes. If you can limit your mistakes in a salary-cap oriented league, then you'll do well."

Does this team need the beginnings of a new core?

Waibel: "There's no question. If you look at the way the core group — you take Nat, Ned and Wingert — those were a big piece of the core group. I would argue that some of the players that we were hoping to step in and become core players, I think for one reason or another, be it individual performance, coaching relationships, tactics, whatever it is, everything that goes into a daily performance and a game performance, it hasn't worked out this year that some of the young players that we're looking at becoming part of that core group haven't really made that step. Does it mean that they can't? No, they could easily make that step in the off-season, maybe they take it next year, maybe we were a year premature in believing they could take that step. That could be our fault. But it hasn't happened this year. We need to add players that we believe can become part of the next core group, but that complement the players we've retained and believe in: Javi, Becks, Nick, we'll call it the 'next generation of players,' out of respect to them. You don't just go out and get 14 20-year-olds and say, 'Oh, we'll be good three years from now because Javi and Becks will teach them how to play.' That's disrespectful to the service they've put into this club, so we need to be thorough in the next four months. We need to build the middle of our roster and we need to build it well, and if we do it, we'll be fine. We have good players. Health has been a massive issue. We haven't seen our group together. It's been frustrating for everyone, it's been disheartening. I think it's forced playing time onto some guys … and it's hurt some of them, because this is a very difficult league. People don't want to say it. All the other countries are scared that this league is growing, because it is. The quality of the league is getting better and better and better. For all of the criticism of the MLS, you can't just step in and play in this league. It takes time, especially if you're 19 or 20-years-old. Maybe that's a four-year pro somewhere else, but that's a really special four-year pro at 20-years-old. We have a lot of young guys that are very fortunate to have played the amount of minutes that they have. I would tell you in January it wasn't the plan. It was to play them and groom them and help them mature, but it wasn't to force them into situations repeatedly that might not be the best."

How do you evaluate the coaching staff going forward?

Waibel: "It's now my job. As a technical director, I considered myself more part of that staff than evaluative of the staff. Bill and I had a really, really good relationship communication-wise, how we spoke about the staff and there was a clear understanding that that was ultimately his decision. I was his advisor, because I was around it more. Stepping back, stepping into a new viewpoint of how I evaluate them consistently now, I need to come up and I need to go meet with people, I need to go meet with other general managers, I need to go meet with other presidents, I need to go meet with people that are in charge of that decision and figure out their evaluative process … I need to do my homework before I pretend to know. I've gotten five emails from fans this year and I've emailed every one of them back. I've gotten two phone calls, I've called both of them back. I'm not the guy who sits in my office and looks down from a rock. I'm also tasked with taking the emotion out of the job and using logic. I love the interaction with the fans, I love feedback, I know people won't believe me when I say this, but I don't do social media. I don't really get it … I don't think people need to know what I ate for breakfast. I need to collect information. It's not only the coach you have and the coaching staff you have, it's also the coaching staffs that are available. Listen, I'm a Seahawks fan. I got my heart ripped out last year and I wanted blood. As a fan, I don't care what's going on in the day-to-day. I believe it was a wrong play-call. I've heard from experts that it was a good play call, but look I'm not an expert. I'm a fan. I didn't play football, but I love it. But I don't think Pete Carroll's going to call me back. I think there's a lot to do before I get too far into [that process]. And I think Dell Loy's stepping into a role where for the next little bit, those conversations are going to go through him as well."

With Jason, Garth and Bill now having moved on, that era is over. Are you excited or nervous to follow that group up knowing the expectations and foundations have laid?

Waibel: "It's genuinely called evolution. What a fan says and what a professional says are two different things. Jason went to coach NYCFC. In his first season, he's coaching Pirlo, Villa, Lampard. Let's not pretend that he got ran out. Let's not pretend that he didn't choose that option. And that's not to say that Jason turned his back on Salt Lake, it's to say that's the evolution of Jason … Jason's aspirations are to be the national team coach. This was a step, and I don't want to speak for Jason, but this was a step that fits those types of aspirations, to coach world-class players and he knew he was going to get that there this year. Garth, extremely loyal to the club, just like Jason and just like Bill, but after the years he spent here, look at the market he went to. He went to a market that draws 45,000 a game and has a budget to spend that's eternal, let's call it. To follow those guys and what they did and what they were able to do here is an awesome challenge. I'm going to be held to the higher standard. Is that necessarily what I would ask for? No, I would ask to be held to a very low standard and then anything I did well would be considered great. But I'm not scared of the standards they set. That's called following excellence, and you either have the courage to do it or you don't. I'm going to take some things to the chin here. It's called life. Bill Manning, again, look at his tenure here and guaranteed Bill was going to move into a extremely important role in wherever he's going. My guess would, again, like the other two, be a bigger market. Not a more loved market, not more a loyal market necessarily, but a bigger market. I just think when opportunities like this come up, my attitude with this wasn't, 'Well I have to take this opportunity.' The conversation I had in January when this came up was that I really enjoy what I'm doing and I feel very good being an assistant coach, let me think about it, let me evaluate it and that's what I did … Guess what, I wasn't supposed to be a pro, I wasn't supposed to be a coach, we weren't supposed to win 15 games last year. Pretty much fits my profile."

What's your relationship with Dell Loy like?

Waibel: "I have a good relationship with Dell Loy. He is high expectations at all times in every thing he does, be it business, whatever it is, he is high expectations. That's the driving force that I think people need to continue to give credence to and give time to. He has a vision and much like my evaluation of players, he's got to evaluate what he's doing within his own business. He believes in it wholeheartedly, just like I believe in my decisions. I don't see any reason why it's not going to work. This guy doesn't touch a whole lot of things that don't end up working out. It's not Dell Loy's intention to be involved on the day-to-day basis. That's not what he wants. I think in the short-run, he sees an opportunity or he saw an opportunity to come in and maybe tweak a few things and make them a little more personal, a little more his. If that's a negative thing, then I would love to go around the valley and meet all the business owners that don't want their business to be theirs. If that's a bad thing, I'd love to drive around the valley and sit down with people and chat and ask why they don't believe you can't restructure or re-evaluate and get better. This is how companies grow and when people choose to leave or a company chooses not to keep someone, there's a reason. There's a reason Jason chose to leave, it's not a bad reason. It doesn't make him a bad person. It doesn't make anyone a bad person … The first thing we all do as human beings is we hear the word 'change,' then change comes and the natural instinct is you get defensive, you protect what you have, you fight. When you get backed into a corner, you fight your way out. This is just the natural fear that comes with change. Whether or not we get it right on the first shot, don't know. There's tough decisions to be made, though. That's for sure."

-Chris Kamrani

Twitter: @chriskamrani