Official: Jason Kreis Hired as New Orlando City Coach

Update: The club has officially announced Kreis as the new head coach of Orlando City. Miles Joseph and CJ Brown — who were both on Kreis' staff at Real Salt Lake — will join him in Orlando as assistants, while current interim head coach Bobby Murphy and goalkeeper coach Stewart Kerr will stay with the club.

The new coaches will begin their tenures at Orlando City on Monday. Bobby Murphy will manage the team at Columbus on Saturday.

"We are very excited that we have got our man. Jason is a progressive thinking and highly ambitious coach, who is very familiar with success in MLS," Orlando City President and Founder Phil Rawlins said in a club press release. "Jason's playing philosophy is the same attack-minded, possession-oriented style of soccer that we have built our club around. He is a winner who checks all the boxes for us."

"Jason flew to Portugal and we met for several hours," added Chairman and Majority Owner Flávio Augusto da Silva in the club release. "I feel very strongly that he can bring us to the next level of development as a club, a higher level, I completely support the board's decision to appoint Jason."

[Original Post]

Boom. Done.

Goal.com’s Ives Galarcep is reporting that Orlando City has hired Jason Kreis the club’s new head coach, succeeding Adrian Heath after a brief interim run by Bobby Murphy. Kreis, a former Major League Soccer MVP and coach of both Real Salt Lake and New York City FC, has a career coaching record of 112-95-67 and is an MLS Cup-winning coach.

The team has been on the look for a replacement for Heath — the only head coach the team has known — for the past two weeks. Just days ago, Paul Tenorio of FourFourTwo reported the Lions were in advanced talks with Kreis to fill the void. Alicia DelGallo of the Orlando Sentinel and Christian Bruey of WFTV independently confirmed that Kreis was on Orlando City’s short list.

The club wanted to get a new head coach in place prior to the July 31 home match against the New England Revolution at Camping World Stadium, and according to Galarcep’s multiple sources (and he’s usually right), that mission has been accomplished.

Orlando City has hired Jason Kreis as the club's second MLS head coach, multiple sources have confirmed to Goal USA. An announcement is expected on Wednesday.

Kreis won the MLS Cup in 2009 at Real Salt Lake and nearly won a second one as recently as 2013, falling in penalty kicks, in his stint with the Western Conference club from 2007-2013.

He left that gig to take on the NYCFC position and lasted one season with the team before being fired by City Football Group. Following Heath’s ousting, Kreis’s name quickly popped up this summer linked to many coaching vacancies, including Seattle, should the Sounders part with Sigi Schmid.

He turned the Salt Lake City franchise into a perennial contender during his time in Utah. Now Orlando City ownership is going to ask him to make the Lions one of the top teams in the East.

We will continue to follow this story as it develops.