Yura Movsisyan wants to come back to Major League Soccer.
Will Real Salt Lake provide the landing spot?
Salt Lake is where the Armenian-American forward spent more than two good seasons, notching 15 goals for RSL following his trade from Sporting Kansas City late in the 2007 season as part of the team’s turnaround under head coach Jason Kreis. Movsisyan’s parting gift, before he left for Danish club Randers, was the 2009 MLS Cup championship.
Now in his third year starring for Spartak Moscow in Russia's Premier League, the forward’s agent, Patrick McCabe, told the Salt Lake Tribune that Movsisyan is vying for a return to MLS – preferably with RSL. But RSL technical director Craig Waibel is not showing his hand just yet.
“There’s always a possibility that I want to add players,” Waibel told MLSsoccer.com in a phone interview Tuesday afternoon. “We could be winning championships, and I would want to add players. To live in a world where you think your group is the best possible combination is pretty obtuse.”
RSL still hold the MLS rights to Movsisyan and, given the team’s early struggles and injury problems, it would stand to reason that they would at least entertain the idea. RSL are coming off a 4-1 drubbing at the hands of the Montreal Impact and sit in eighth place in the Western Conference with 14 points from 11 games.
“We’re on 14 points,” Waibel said. “We’re three points out of fourth place. So we’re one win away from fourth place, one third of the way through the season, having played 25 players and having a bevy of the minutes played without our experienced players. We’re getting a lot of experience for the young guys.”
Movsisyan, however, the fourth pick in the 2006 MLS SuperDraft after starring at Pasadena (Calif.) High School and Pasadena City College, would bring a proven goalscoring track record to Salt Lake. After leaving RSL for Randers, the 27-year-old Movsisyan’s career has been on an upward trajectory in Europe.
He joined Russian side Krasnodar in 2011 and scored 23 goals in 50 appearances over the course of two seasons there, leading to a reported $9.7 million transfer to Spartak in 2012. There he scored 16 goals in 25 league appearances in the 2013-14 season. He has also become a regular for Armenia, combining for seven goals in qualifying for Euro 2012 and the 2014 FIFA World Cup.
Movsisyan’s agent told the Tribune that other MLS teams have expressed interest, and that a possible move has to do with family concerns.
“Yura is driven by family,” McCabe said, according to the Tribune. “It's why he went to Europe to try to provide for them, and he's done a good job of that. Europe is obviously a totally different competitive landscape when you're dealing with clubs, especially when you're dealing with Russian clubs."
The financial side of things could complicate the move. RSL currently have a full deck of three Designated Players: Joao Plata, Sebastian Jaime and Kyle Beckerman.
“My job is to always seek out every angle and to discuss and pursue the right moves for the team at the right time,” Waibel said. “With a little creativity, you can always figure things out.”
