Waibel not ruling out Movsisyan stay at RSL

During an interview during last week’s taping of official RSL podcast OnFrame, Real Salt Lake general manager Craig Waibel broke down the current situation with striker Yura Movsisyan, saying his future is uncertain.

During the interview, Waibel said Movsisyan chose to stay at Real Salt Lake rather than depart the club during the summer transfer window.

“One thing people don’t realize is the options that really good players have,” he said. “Yura chose to stay. A lot of people don’t realize this. In the summer, there was an option that we got approached with, that he got approached with. He chose to stay. It was out of loyalty to do the right thing for his teammates and his team. Those are the things that in those moments, we don’t just walk out and share those, because there are a lot of things that do have to stay private.”

Waibel said despite the difficulties, he had a good relationship with Movsisyan.

“Yura and I have had a very good relationship throughout this entire thing,” he said. “It’s challenging.”

Clarifying the reason for Movsisyan’s drop off in minutes, Waibel attributed that to tactical changes.

“When there’s a coaching change, we kind of start playing with — to get real geeky — a false nine instead of a true nine,” he said. ... “We start playing with a false nine and it starts to work, and you go through all the steps with that.”

Movsisyan, who remains on contract, could remain at the club, Waibel said.

“With Yura, there’s going to be some conversations between myself, him and Mike, and we’ll figure out the best fit,” he said. “It was a frustrating year, and it wouldn’t be the first time someone went through one frustrating year before they found success, and it wouldn’t surprise me if a frustrating year led to a request for a different fit.

“But we’ve got Yura on contract, and he and I respect each other enough that we’ll sit in the room and we’ll have a really good conversation about it.”