Q&A: Real Salt Lake GM on job security, Chicho Arango, home struggles and Open Cup run

Sandy • When Ryan Smith and David Blitzer took over the Real Salt Lake franchise at the beginning of last year, it was reasonable to think there could be changes at the top of the organization, as new owners are typically wont to do.

But Real Salt Lake general manager Elliot Fall is operating like a man who expects to be around for a while.

He has presided over the signings of two players who broke club records for transfer fees in Carlos Andrés Gómez and Cristian “Chicho” Arango so far in 2023. This week, he added Colombian midfielder Nelson Palacio to an RSL team sitting just two points out of third place in the West.

Fall had a contract expire at the end of 2022. And while there’s been no formal announcement about an extension, Fall doesn’t seem bothered.

“I’m not gonna get into too many specifics, but I am comfortable, I am here,” Fall said when recently asked about this contract status. “I am comfortable in the role that ownership has given me to lead this club and ... and proud of the work that we get to do every day with our team. I’ll leave the details behind closed doors, but I’m in a good place.”

Fall then expressed his desire to be with RSL for years to come.

“I would love to be,” Fall said. “I love this club. I love this community. I’m from Salt Lake. I would love to be here as long as as they want me to be here and as long as things are moving positively for this club. I have no reason to believe that that isn’t in the cards.”

The Tribune sat down with Fall recently to discuss the season, the club’s record-breaking signings and more.

The following question and answer session with Fall was edited for length and clarity.

What is your assessment of how strange the season has been so far?

It’s certainly been a roller coaster. We started with a road win. Little did we know that road wins were going to become the norm this year. And then we came home and didn’t perform up to the level, and lost four straight games. That was a low. It was a really tough time. We had to buckle down and get through it.

But we all knew that there’s talent here, there’s continuity here, there’s a group that’s committed and invested in getting it right. So almost as quickly as that skid happened, we were able to kind of turn things around a little bit, won a few games, things started trending upward.

The Open Cup has been a really positive run for us. The Open Cup is a really interesting competition because it can serve as a real galvanizing event for teams if a few things fall in your favor. It took extra time and a tough game in Vegas to kind of get that rolling.

But those kinds of moments and those kinds of games can really propel groups forward. The group started to find a confidence within itself, and you’ve seen it since then in our away games. Honestly, you’ve seen it in some home games. The weird thing is we haven’t — for whatever reason, it hasn’t clicked at home. We have to figure that out. But things are certainly headed in the right direction.

In past years, RSL has said they take the U.S. Open Cup seriously. But it seems like it’s different this year. Why?

It’s not disingenuous to say that it’s been something we wanted to compete in and put our best foot forward in past years. We weren’t making that up. Now, that doesn’t mean that the performances and results were what they needed to be to get the ball rolling on that.

Last year, we lost a really tough home game. Now, no excuses, we shouldn’t have lost that game. We were, frankly, a much better team than the team we lost to. But that’s the sport. That’s soccer. It’s why there’s such an aura around one-and-done tournaments globally like this. Because this is where David comes in and knocks Goliath off. That’s how it happens.

This year, I don’t think it was all that different when we went to Vegas. It’s just the performance was a little better, things shook out a little differently, we won the game, all of that.

I guess why it’s different this year is I think we’re a little deeper team. I think we have a little more talent throughout the roster. And second to that, if you go back and look, the Open Cup game we lost last year was right after [Damir Kreilach] got hurt. We didn’t have [Jefferson Savarino] yet. We didn’t have Anderson [Julio]. It was a group that wasn’t full.

It’s just a confluence of events where it’s come together and we are making a run. We’re enjoying it. Now it’s real. It’s very real. You’re in a semifinal. That’s no joke.

How have you seen Damir Kreilach recover from that back surgery and how has his role shifted?

One thing I’ve learned in being in this league for as long as I have is every season is a different story. So when we go back to Dami — has his role changed? Sure. A huge part of that, to me, is that every year — especially a guy like Dami, a leader like Dami, a professional like Dami — is going to shift his role a little bit to what the team needs, and help the team in the best way possible.

So yeah, his role is a little different. He’s come off the bench more than he has in the past. He’s still working his way back to what physically he can be. It was a back injury. That’s a long-term injury. It kept him out for a long time. There were nerve issues involved. So all of that, you still just have to work your way through some of it. But he’s Dami, man. He’s an unbelievable professional. He’s one of the best human beings I’ve ever been around. We couldn’t be luckier to have a leader like him within our group.

Is he physically the same guy that he was in 2021 before the injury when he was an All-Star and should have been Best 11? I don’t know. Probably not quite. But he adapts. He’s a pro. He’s found ways to still be effective and make it work. This is a unique year. This is the 2023 RSL and 2023 Dami. He’s doing a great job of helping the team week in and week out.

You’ve signed Carlos Andrés Gómez and Cristian ‘Chicho’ Arango. How much does that have to do with planning and having new owners that have been willing to spend?

If we had built the roster in a different way without the flexibility, then we wouldn’t have been able to. Even if ownership wanted to, they wouldn’t have been able to come in and invest in the group as easily.

We always constructed the roster in ways that we could be flexible. Depending on how investment came in or what type of resources were available to us to bolster the roster, we always kind of built it that way. But over those 18 months [of having no owner], it was very strategic. It was very targeted to bring in players that we felt could be both helpful and productive for us at the time, but also provided value and would be complementary — and I don’t use the word complementary in a negative tone — but could then be a part of something with even greater investment when new ownership came in and wanted to add to that investment. So yeah, this is all that process playing out.

It takes time. The reality is if we had gone out and signed all of these players last summer, it probably wouldn’t have worked. The reality is when you go in and you bring that number of new players into an organization and into a system, it’s really, really hard to integrate on the fly that number of players, that cultural shift, all of those pieces that you have to be cognizant of. So being able to do it a little bit over a couple of transfer windows I think has really benefited us, and I think it will benefit us even more in the long run.

What I’m not saying though is, oh, we were going to sign X player or X position in each window and that it was rigid like that. That wasn’t it. But it was more as dominoes start falling and as pieces start falling into place, this is how we can structure it so that it fits the overall timeline, fits the overall budget, fits the overall structure, and do it in an efficient way that allows us to continue to be flexible and productive in future windows.

(On Thursday, RSL announced the signing of Colombian midfielder Nelson Palacio, 22, who could also start play as soon as July 8.)

Sometimes much to the chagrin of the fans.

Of course there are times when the fans are unhappy. They want things a certain way. They want things at a certain time. I totally get it. Of course.

And they want to win.

Of course, exactly. They want to win.

At the end of the day, what we need to remember in our jobs is even when, say, fans are upset, they’re upset because they want the same things we want. We want to put a quality product out. We want to put a winning team on the field. We want to compete for trophies. And that’s what they want. They want the team to be competing, and a team that they feel they can support and represents them and represents the community.

I try to ignore all the noise. I don’t pay attention to it. But I also understand it. I understand why people say the things they do.

So, it’s fine. Yeah, there are times when things are much to the chagrin of the fans. But we have to make the right decisions for the club long term. And that, at the end of the day, is my job and my team’s job.

What do you think of the idea that RSL’s roster is one of the lowest valued in MLS?

I think it’s cool and it’s fun for fans to be able to look at Transfermarkt and see valuations and all that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, I don’t think those valuations mean anything. Being in these conversations and negotiating contracts and transfer agreements, very rarely are they correlated with what the Transfermarkt value of a guy is. So the valuation part, I just I don’t care about that much.

The investment side of it — and this is no fault of [Tribune reporter] Andy [Larsen] or the work he did — it really just comes down to the fact that not all of the information is always public. But we’ve invested really heavily in this roster. Ownership has. And honestly, I think at this point, we are close to or at the top of the league in transfer fees paid this year. They’re investing in players for the long term for this club. You saw that with Andrés Gomez. He’s done everything we wanted him to do and more and that’s because ownership was willing to step up and pay a significant fee for him.

Part of it, too, is when you see the publicly released salary numbers, that only tells a small part of the tale. Our salary numbers aren’t are as high oftentimes, but that’s strategic as well. When you invest in young players, those are players whose salaries are, generally speaking, a little lower, but you’re gonna pay more of a transfer fee because you’re paying on potential, you’re paying for future value, all that type of thing.

So they invested in Andrés Gómez, invested in Brayan Vera, and then obviously invested in Chicho. Even if you go back to last year — we bought [Jefferson] Savarino, we bought Anderson Julio, we bought Diego Luna. So there’s been investment, there’s been commitment to doing this the right way and doing it in a long-term sustainable way.

What makes Chicho a difference-maker?

There’s a few layers to that. I think, one, I have an enormous amount of faith in our talent identification process, in the guys that we have in those roles. Kurt Schmid, our technical director, leads that. They do an absolutely phenomenal job.

If you go back and look over the last, you know, handful of transfer windows, at the different moves we’ve made, and also the moves that we didn’t make — the players that we were looking at, the players that for whatever reason it didn’t happen — the quality across the board is fantastic. I think they’ve done a really, really good job of that. So one, when I talk to our talent identification group and they say, ‘This is a slam dunk, this is the guy, let’s go for it,’ I trust it 100%.

Now, obviously Chicho is an enormous piece and there’s even more to an acquisition like that. So his acquisition, what gives me comfort in it more so than normal? A big part of it is the productivity level he’s had in this league and his understanding of the league. This is a very unique place to play.

For example, the travel demands here are outrageous. You play in every single climate. We can’t even sniff another team without getting on a plane. Guys come here and don’t understand what that means until they’ve been here. Again, the climates. We’re gonna play an August match in Houston, and a February match in Salt Lake. Those are two entirely different things.

So all of those different pieces and the fact that he knows what they are and he’s seen them. He started the MLS Cup final last year. He was an MLS MVP finalist last year. He’s done it in this league. We know he can do it in this league. Now, it’s up to us to put him in positions to be successful. But we believe that we have a group that can do that.

He’s just a very good player, and he’s an all-around player. And what I’ve loved even more is the quality of person and quality of leader and teammate he is. So I think he’s really going to help us raise the level across the board.

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