Lesson: [Good] Ownership is Important

I was thinking that perhaps Ives Galarcep has been too harsh on Real Salt Lake's Front Office. Well, I was thinking that until I read this piece in the New York Times. Key graf:

“When I hired my coach, John Ellinger, two and a half years ago, one of the reasons I hired him was because I knew Freddy wanted to play for him...We were thinking about this years ago.”

Now, this might be retroactive justification for a coaching move that has shown little return on investment to date, but let's take it at face-value. One of the reasons you hired your coach in 2004 was to attract an unproven player who was signed to another team and may well have headed abroad before coming to your stadium? Are you serious? What a ridiculous reason! I could understand if Checketts had said something about wanting a coach to "bring up unproven young talent" or something like that. Well, I could understand it if not for the fact that RSL has been staffed by MLS journeyman over the past two years. Frankly, if that's a major reason for signing the coach, then you've pretty much admitted that you wasted your first two years in the league, and you've wasted the time of the people supporting RSL. What a maroon.

Now, I think personally that Checketts is overstating the case. Maybe he tangentially thought about this two years ago when signing Coach E, but I doubt it really factored into his reasoning at all. Tough choice on Checketts: Is he an idiot, or a liar? I hope for RSL fans that it is the latter.