American sports teams have made a habit of retiring the numbers of great players that played for their teams. In soccer though, retired numbers have never really caught on because the numbers do not represent players so much as they do roles. In soccer, numbers are symbols.
Real Salt Lake Taking Bad Idea of Retiring Numbers In Soccer To New Low
There is tradition in numbers in soccer specific to positions and roles. Whereas the number 23 in basketball will always be associated with Michael Jordan, in soccer the number one is always the goal keeper. The number 10 is the attacking playmaker and isn't associated with any specific one. player. It is associated with a style of play and skill that has led to players like Pele, Diego Maradona and more recently Zinadine Zidane, Ronaldinho and Lionel Messi to wear the number. The numbers in soccer have become so much associated with a type of player and his role on a team that it's regularly used as the way to describe an attacking, creative player with people calling that kind of player "a true number 10."
Taking away the number 10 on a team would also take away the identity of an almost essential player on every team. It would be unheard of. Well, Real Salt Lake is now taking away the identity of an almost equally immortal number and player. The club will retire Jason Kreis' number nine or, you know, the number for an obscene number of the top strikers on any club in all of soccer history.
Ronaldo and Marco van Basten are two of the best strikers to take the field in the last 20 years and both wore the number nine. One of the best strikers on a team is usually handed the number nine shirt and it's almost exclusively a striker's number. Dimitar Berbatov wears the number nine shirt for Manchester United, Samuel Eto'o wears the number for Inter Milan and when Chelsea signed their supposed next start striker, they gave the number nine shirt to Fernando Torres.
Those are some pretty top strikers, from van Basten, even down to the thus far disappointing Torres yet even they will not have their number nine retired because retiring such a number runs contrary to the nature of the sport. On the other hand, Salt Lake is retiring Kreis’ number nine.
Let's consider that. Real Salt Lake will retire the number associated with the top striker to a guy who scored all of 17 goals for the team. He was their first player sure, but he only scored 17 goals for the team. He was one of the best strikers early in MLS, but that was when he was playing for the Dallas Burn, not Salt Lake. He has gone on to be a top coach for the team, maybe the best in MLS. His number nine is not being retired for his coaching though, it is being retired for his 17 goals. Chad Barrett scored an equal number of goals for the Chicago Fire. Robbie Findley had 12 more goals than that for Salt Lake. It's 17 goals!
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