Most professional athletes learn to deal with media criticism, but that doesn't mean it won't always sting.

Before Saturday night's home match against the San Jose Earthquakes, the Salt Lake Tribune ran an article critical of coach Jason Kreis' improvement since last year.

"Two months into the season," Trib reporter Michael Lewis wrote, "reconstructed RSL is starting to look suspiciously like all of its previous incarnations - maddeningly inconsistent, catastrophically unable to win on the road and statistically among the worst teams in Major League Soccer.

"Seasons generally don't get easier as they go along. Players get tired and hurt, some leave for international duty, and pressure mounts for bad teams to find ways out of their slumps."

Needless to say, RSL didn't take kindly to the harsh words from one of Utah's largest newspapers.

Kreis attributes RSL's current batch of struggles to inexperience as a group.

"I've said before, this is a group that needs to learn," Kreis said after Saturday's win. "There is one thing that we can't speed up, and that is time. It's going to take time for these guys to learn how to play together; it's going to take time for some of these younger players to figure out how to tactfully close out games."

Apparently, time is not something critics want to give to the MLS newcomers. Not long ago, reports swarmed the media that RSL and owner Dave Checketts were considering leaving the Beehive State, prompted by suspicions the team would not have a permanent home in Salt Lake City. It wasn't until then-mayor Rocky Anderson and a slew of Utah lawmakers allocated funds for the building of a soccer-specific stadium in Sandy that those rumors were put to bed.

Now, as the team begins the long process of bringing in new talent and a subsequent revitalizing force, the drama has been reignited.

"He [the Trib reporter] said we were the worst team in the league; I guess he doesn't know how to read the standings," RSL team captain Kyle Beckerman said. "I didn't even read it [the article], but I saw it, and heard a lot about it. It was a huge headline.

"Whatever; he's not welcome around here anymore."

Some players, however, take the comments as a reason to make themselves better -- and fast. Midfielder Dema Kovalenko recently reflected on the positive side of the Trib's comments.

"I was very upset," Kovalenko said. "He's right; we're not playing to our potential and we could do better. But you don't say things like that in the paper. I will talk to him six weeks from now, because I know we're going to do better. We're going to put ourselves in a better position, and then we'll talk. I'm going to show the guys what this guy wrote before every game."

Some of the American sportswriter's comments must have been lost in translation to the Ukrainian midfielder.

"How can we be the worst team in the league?" Kovalenko said. "We lost five games; there are other teams in the league who have lost seven or eight games. We're not the worst team. I don't know what he's watching. But he's writer, and he can write whatever he wants, I guess."

Copyright Brigham Young University 4 Jun 2008