Real Salt Lake coverage (fanboys to cynics)
June 23, 2008 by f4denz.
So RSL beats New England and the fanboys, the wagon jumpers, the fair weather fans all come out of the woodwork. Here is a sample of national and local coverage, some of it is the work of those mentioned above, and the local coverage continues to be pessimistic and negative.
RSL down road warrior Revs rsl.american-soccer-news.com
Real Salt Lake (5-5-4, 19 pts.) continued their impressive run of home domination; dispatching the New England Revolution (8-4-3, 26 pts.) 2-1 in a match that now place RSL in sole possession of second place in the Western Conference. With the win, RSL move to the .500 mark and continue their unbeaten streak at home for the season.
The Good, The Bad, The Coyote Ugly blog.washingtonpost.com/soccerinsider
The Good
*RSL remaining unbeaten at the Rice-Eccles quarry (4-0-4), extending its unbeaten run to five and taking over second place in the West.
The Bad
*Jay Heaps’s own goal, the first by New England in four years.
The Coyote Ugly
*Confusion between Nick Rimando and Nat Borchers, leading to Cristman’s goal (reminiscent of the Gonzalo Peralta-Jose Carvallo mixup early this season).
MLS Weekend: Six Goals For A Point ussoccerplayers.typepad.com
The Crew and Galaxy hit each other up for three goals a piece and DC wins the first leg of their Sunday series. Meanwhile, Real Salt Lake make the weekend’s major statement.
SBI MLS Power Rankings Week 13 soccerbyives.net
Call it the Curse of the No. 1 spot. FC Dallas was once No. 1 in the SBI MLS Power Rankings, then the Hoops promptly fell apart. The Columbus Crew had it for a while, but eventually suffered a losing streak. Most recently the Chicago Fire grabbed the top spot and hasn’t won a match since.
Now you have New England, which moved into No. 1 last week only to promptly go 0-1-1 in a week where two wins were probably expected. Was that enough to knock the Revs off the top spot? Nope, not yet. With the Galaxy settling for a tie and the Chicago Fire freefalling, nobody was able to take advantage of New England’s tumble.
Two teams currently streaking up the standings are D.C. United and Real Salt Lake. D.C. is 4-0-1 in its past five while RSL, which just beat New England, is 3-0-1 in its past five. Not bad for two teams that were near the basement just a month ago. Now, both squads reside in the top half.
MLS Saturday Round-Up: Shoot-out in LA, Salt Lake Cruising goal.com
Landon Donovan scored twice on his return from international duty, but the Galaxy could only draw with Columbus. Meanwhile, RSL bested MLS leaders New England to extend their five-game unbeaten run, and New York earned a precious three points.
Real Salt Lake: surprising RSL holds off Revolution deseretnews.com
One of the only consistent things about Major League Soccer is its unpredictability. Three nights after Real Salt Lake battled to a scoreless draw against the worst team in MLS — a team playing with only 10 men no less — it seemed logical RSL might struggle against league-leading New England, a team on a seven-game unbeaten streak.
It’s funny how things don’t always unfold as expected, especially in soccer.
(funny how the local media need a negative sounding headline for a great RSL victory- the article is more fair than the headline)
SL Trib coverage from Saturday before the match
RSL squanders opportunities
Real Salt Lake just played back-to-back scoreless draws at home. One hundred eighty minutes, 10,800 seconds, 43 shots, but no goals. Ugh.
(come on Steve, your discounting a great effort by Kevin Hartman and horrible calls by the officials against San Jose, your better than cheap shots)
Trib coverage from Sunday after the win
RSL sits alone in 2nd place
When Real Salt Lake was shaking off another scoreless home draw against a last-place team a few nights ago, coach Jason Kreis insisted that even almost halfway through the Major League Soccer season, it was still too early to start checking the standings. He could be forgiven for indulging a peek now, though.
For the first time since after the third game in franchise history - a span of 1,154 days - RSL is sitting higher than third place in the MLS Western Conference standings this morning, after its impressive 2-1 victory over league-leading New England in front of 11,965 fans at Rice-Eccles Stadium on Saturday night.
(I really wonder what short of winning the MLS cup and having sold out games at the new stadium, it will take to get some level of supportive coverage from the local media, who would rather dedicated more coverage to potential Jazz draft picks or a couple Jazz players making the Olympic B-ball team, than a currently playing team in second place and on pace to have their best year as a franchise?)