Real Salt Lake - The Issues

Andrea Canales has a nice column on Real Salt Lake. She looks at some of the posative points of their season despite their last place finish in the West and 3rd worst in the league overall. While it's refreshing to see a columnist look at the posistives, there are several issues facing the team. 4) Ellinger - There are still a lot of question marks over his ability to coach at the professional level. Many of his critics say that it's not Ellinger that turned the team around in the 2nd half of the season but simply the added quality players on the team coming together and finally performing well. 3) Pope and Kreis - Both Eddie Pope and Jason Kreis are important players in the history of Major League Soccer (MLS). Eddie Pope's one of the highest paid players in the league. He'll be 33 going into the next season which normally wouldn't rule out a center back from having a good year except that he's been struggling with back problems. This year we saw a 35 year old Tony Sanneh return to form after struggling through back injuries. It's not time to rule Pope out yet. But it may not be worth the risk especially considering in the MLS, RSL could have a couple decent defenders for Pope's wages. Kreis is facing similar questions over how much he can contribute to the offense next year as a 34 year old. He may slide back into the midfield. That solves one problem but creates new questions over how well he can contribute day in, day out in that role and who from the midfield - Williams, Ballouchy, or Klein - loses out. 2) Defense - Real Salt Lake was tied for the worst defense in the league this year. While it was much improved over 2005's expansion year, it was hard for them to get worse than last year's performance. The team only had 4 shutouts. It's not just the number of goals they gave up but that consistantly gave up goals. This is another reason that the team may be better served cashing in on Eddie Pope. It also leads to questions over the quality of the midfield. Williams, Klein and even Ballouchy are not known for their ability to defend. Ellinger needs to shake up things in his midfield to give their defense more help. 1) Jeff Cunningham - The key change last offseaon was bringing in Jeff Cunningham. He was directly involved in 28 of RSL's 45 goals in 2006. But this was the last year of his contract and the league has yet to announce signing him to an extension. And to thicken the plot a few weeks ago Cunningham was quoted in the press making comments about playing at the new expansion team, Toronto FC. If Cunningham doesn't return for 2007, Real Salt Lake has a huge void to fill to say the least.