Former RSL coach Jason Kreis named new boss at Orlando City

Jason Kreis has a home again: The former RSL coach has landed at Orlando City SC in his first position since being fired as New York City FC coach.

Jason Kreis was the head of Real Salt Lake from 2007 to 2013, and he was the first player the club signed. Under Dave Checketts’ ownership, Kreis was brought to help build the “character and spirit” of the team, former RSL coach John Ellinger once said.

In 2007, Kreis retired from his playing career to become RSL’s second coach; at the end of his second full year, he found himself hoisting the biggest trophy in American soccer as Real Salt Lake won the MLS Cup.

This is Kreis’s third head coaching gig, and interestingly, he’s only coached expansion sides. That’s perhaps a coincidence.

Further, Kreis notably struggled to meet expectations for an ownership group in City Football Group that had saddled him with several players that didn’t exactly fit his system, which doesn’t even start to mention the Frank Lampard issues that the club hoisted on itself with his contract-no-contract deceptions.

Orlando City SC, on the back of firing coach Adrian Heath, has brought in Kreis, and it’ll be interesting to see how he interfaces with ownership there.