Jason Kreis is trying to earn something, a certain something, just as he has done stemming back five decades to when he was a kid.
And when he was a college All-American at Duke … and when he played nine years as a professional goal-scorer in Dallas … and when he was named the MVP of MLS, the first American-born player to receive that award … and later when he played for Real Salt Lake … and after that, when he was RSL’s head coach, when Real won the MLS Cup … and when he coached NYCFC … and when he coached Orlando City SC … and when he coached the U.S. national U-23 team … and when he was an assistant at Inter Miami, just before a fellow named Lionel Messi arrived … and now, back with RSL again.
It’s just, that certain something isn’t what it once was. It’s changed.
It’s not a championship, not a trophy, not a headline, not recognition, not a scream or a shoutout or anybody’s praise — and it’s definitely not a bright spotlight.
The coach who once was one of the hottest names in all of American soccer — a coach desired by numerous MLS clubs, teams with grand intentions, extending to him big promises and open checkbooks, a coach who once scolded none other than David Beckham, giving the star player the what-for, putting him straight in his place — barely has a name now.
He’s the man with no name, the Invisible Man, his profile buried deep enough on Real’s organizational chart that outsiders might consider him the Director of Nothing.
But no, he’s the Director of That Certain Something, to him the most important thing — having a positive influence here, there, everywhere. Let the other guys draw the cameras, the microphones, and get the glory, if RSL ever soars to such heights again. He quietly seeks a subtle team-wide effect.
If that sounds corny, what it actually is, in an extremely competitive team sport, is the exact opposite.
“You go from instant gratification and recognition [and blame] as a head coach to … this,” he says. “It’s what I value.”
What he’s come to value.
“This game has a way of changing your perspective on things, your perspective on life,” says current Real coach Pablo Mastroeni, a former player who competed against Kreis in college (at North Carolina State) and in MLS games. “He was super-fiery as a player and coach, demanding a lot from teammates and players. In his role here, that’s not all gone, but he’s learned a lot. There’s been a level of growth through the years that he’s imparting to us.”
Before digging into all the updated details on this new enlightened version of Kreis — who most people around here remember, as Mastroeni indicates, as a forceful, uncompromising lord of the pitch, a stern-and-staid mastermind who sought to conquer the world the way most folks seek air to breathe — consider where his journey started and the subsequent triumphs and, even more, the defeats that have rounded his jagged edges.
Jason Kreis grew up in America’s heartland — Omaha, Neb. — in a solid family of modest means, moved when his dad took a new job in the New Orleans area. That’s where he slowly, at first, climbed upward on the prep soccer scene after being ignored and doubted by many — he was diminutive in size and somewhat slow in breakaway speed — and then rocketed upward via his acquired skill and his quickness around and deft touch on the ball. Still, national development programs shunned him, creating “a chip on my shoulder,” he says, “a drive, a real hunger to prove people wrong. That’s how I felt for the majority of my soccer career.”
His mother and father, both from farm families, taught him to work hard and dream big, that he had to earn his way via commitment and diligence. They also passed along a more significant intrinsic gift — an intensity that stirred determination, especially when those talent evaluators threw shade his way. Throw, they did.
When the young Kreis eventually stepped into the sun, mainly by repeatedly putting the ball in the net, colleges came after him with scholarship offers. As mentioned, he ended up at Duke, starting all four years, being named a finalist for college player of the year his senior season, then signed one of the first five contracts at the onset of Major League Soccer in the mid-‘90s. He was drafted by Dallas in the fifth round — another bit of disrespect, he figured — where he rapidly rose to the top of the league and stayed there over a span of nine years.
“I was a beloved player there,” he says. “Captain of the team. I was an iconic figure. … Things were very good — until they weren’t.”
After accomplishing so much in Dallas, and after recovering from an ACL surgery, team officials informed Kreis that he was not scheduled to hold onto his key position on the field, essentially that he was no longer a priority, an attitude that baffled the icon.
“That rung a bell that could not be un-rung,” he says. “I told my agent I wanted out of there.”
He ended up being traded to RSL, Utah’s expansion team.
Salt Lake City, UT--6/24/06--8:23:51 PM- Real's Jason Kreis during the game. ********* New England Revolution versus Real Salt Lake. Chris Detrick File #_1CD8419
While starring for Real, and also continuing to battle injuries, Kreis was approached by team owner Dave Checketts to see if the heady and headstrong player would be interested in moving from the pitch into the front office, namely as general manager. Kreis responded by telling Checketts that he might be willing to hang up his kit for another job — head coach.
That’s exactly what happened. So it was that the first player in MLS history to score 100 goals wrapped a whistle around his neck at the age of 34 and took command of Real Salt Lake. At first, Kreis’ team was terrible. When Checketts noticed and mentioned that fact to Kreis, his response, in so many words, was “tell me something I don’t know.” The new coach told the owner what he needed to turn the outfit into a consistent winner, and Checketts said, OK, but if we give you what you need, you’ll be held accountable if it doesn’t work.
Kreis took a trip to Argentina, where he found talented midfielder Javier Morales, among other players. From there, he cultivated the famous RSL trio of Morales, Kyle Beckerman and Nick Rimando. Real transformed from what had been initially a joke around MLS into the league’s best team, its champion in 2009. Through the seasons that Kreis coached the team, it contended regularly. It could have won a second Cup four years later, with a group Kreis considers better than his title team, but was denied by the difference of a ball hitting the post instead of the net in a final against Kansas City.
Either way, Kreis was the coach that other suitors wanted. He had become known for both his intellect and his fierce focus. Illustrative of that two-fisted approach was, alongside many other similar instances, Kreis’ aforementioned encounter with Beckham, the British star who played for the L.A. Galaxy, the team RSL beat for the Cup in 2009, and the renowned star who MLS was using as a primary attraction.
It went down like this: During a regular-season match, there was a disputed call with which Kreis vehemently disagreed. The RSL coach started barking at the referee. Beckham, who was standing nearby, mistakenly thought Kreis was yelling at him. So, Beckham commenced screaming at Kreis. Kreis stared back at Beckham and told him basically to shut the hell up. One of Kreis’ fundamental rules was that a player should never talk to an opposing coach in the course of competition, that Beckham was out of line. Beckham confronted Kreis as the teams exited the field.
“Don’t ever yell at me,” Kreis said. “I told him he didn’t know what he was talking about.”
Niiiiiice. Not nice.
“He was upset,” Kreis says now, with a half-laugh. “So was I, but I bought him a drink six months later and we were good.”
Other powers around the league figured if Kreis could turn that team out west somewhere — that team in that quaint Amish village in the shadow of the Wasatch — into a champion, he certainly could transform their team into the same. It should be mentioned here that he achieved that with the help of former general manager Garth Lagerwey, who Kreis says is “one of the smartest people I ever worked with.”
Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune Real Salt Lake coach Jason Kreis and Real Salt Lake general manager Garth Lagerwey pose for a portrait at Rio Tinto Stadium Wednesday June 13, 2012.
Kreis made a semi-difficult decision when he once more felt under-appreciated, this time by RSL owner Dell Loy Hansen, who, like the dudes in Dallas, rang a bell that couldn’t be un-rung. He bolted to coach an expansion team in New York City, and … well, let’s just say that decision didn’t pan out the way Kreis had hoped. What the coach had been led to believe would be the execution of a longterm plan for growth and development ended after just one season. He was fired. (Lagerwey, meanwhile, stayed with RSL for just one more year, but later was hired as GM with Seattle.)
Next, Kreis took the helm at Orlando City, where he thought he’d be given proper time to construct a competitive team, the way he did in Utah. “I’m a builder and a planner,” he says, “not a fixer who’s going to win in the first six months.” Two years wasn’t long enough, and he was fired again.
Thereafter, he worked as an assistant at Inter Miami, while also coaching the U.S. U-23 national team. Neither of those gigs had much staying power, and Kreis, who admits he made some mistakes along the way, was fired in Miami immediately before Messi was signed.
A whole lot of bells were ringing.
That was when Kreis came home to his wife, Kimberly, and informed her that he was finished with coaching. He had nearly quit once before in 2007 while struggling in his early time with Real Salt Lake, but on that occasion, Kimberly informed him straight back that quitting was not an option. After what happened in Miami, it was the right option. When Kreis was rejected for a job as an assistant on the full U.S. men’s national team, he hung up the whistle.
“I was done coaching,” he says.
At that point, Kreis wanted to find something in soccer that felt like it had some permanence, something, somehow, somewhere, that had meaning and felt like home. He’d moved, along with Kimberly and eventually their kids, 15 times in 29 years. When RSL re-hired him in his current role last year, that made it 16 in 30. He’ll move an additional time when his family’s house here is completed in a few months.
But home he is now.
Describing precisely what Kreis does for Real’s assorted entities is comprehensive and complicated. It’s not nothing, it’s a little of everything — for RSL, for the Monarchs, for the academy, for the Royals. He helps with alignment between the teams, in developing and teaching talent, in boosting them as individuals, he also lends a hand with personnel, with tactics, with building culture, with many facets of organizational operations.
“One of Jay’s greatest impacts here is keeping an eye on results, but also bringing up the young guys,” Mastroeni says. ”For the players and the coaches, he brings great insight.”
Kreis confirms that the hunger to win, to earn titles and trophies, to serve that drive fueled by intensity, remains.
But the anxious and abject need to beat down disrespect, both imagined and real, to prove that he’s the best, that he can and will sit atop his particular soccer realm, to earn the achievements and the accolades that he once chased have diminished. The years, the ups and downs, have soothed that beast and that burden.
Ironically, on account of his varied accumulated experiences, Kreis is probably a better coach now, at 52, than he was when he led RSL to their championship some 16 years ago.
(Real Salt Lake) Real Salt Lake Director of Operations & Special Projects, Jason Kreis, looks on ahead of the club's game against DC United on June 15, 2025.
No matter, says Kreis.
“I understand what it is that I value and how I’m going to feel valued. It used to be [earning it by] winning games and trophies and being the greatest coach in the world. Now it’s more about my influence on others. When I look back on my coaching experiences, it’s not the championship I remember, it’s the conversations with the players after they move on, it’s the appreciation they bring to me about my leadership, my mentorship, the influence I have and had on them as a person. I’m very much motivated by that.”
Yeah, Kreis wants RSL to contend for a championship every year.
“The days I feel most valued, though,” he says, “are when I pass along a message to a player who says, ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way before.’ Telling them, demonstrating, what I believe in. I want there to be a legacy for what I’ve done. I want to feel important. [But] having a conversation with a U-16 player in the morning, and then a conversation with an RSL player or a Royals player in the afternoon, or a Royals coach or an RSL coach or an academy coach whenever, there’s just so many opportunities for me to have a positive influence. That’s what I value.”
Now, away from the bright lights, in the dark anonymity of Real Salt Lake’s back rooms, it’s the certain something the Invisible Man earns.
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