Reversal of fortune for Real Salt Lake
It hasn’t happened often this year, but last night RSL was outplayed from start to finish. Usually it RSL playing better than their opponents and coming away empty handed, but KC had an ace up their sleeve, Jim Conrad. For 88 minutes the Wizards outplayed RSL and could not score, RSL took fewer shots but had more shots on goal (shots 21-13 KC, shots on goal 5-3 RSL) but it was a set piece in the 89th minute that is scored as an own goal but the end result was a goal for KC and enough to get 3 points from a match that should have ended 0-0.
RSL had played with fire for most of the match allowing KC to control possession and pace of the match, far too much time was spent in the RSL half of the pitch. There were some bright spots for RSL, once again the play of Olave was impressive all match long, Yura and Tino played well in their 20 minutes of playing time. Several players had a decent effort; Beckerman, Dema, Wingert, Beltran, Borchers, Williams, and Rimando did well, nothing special or spectacular but solid efforts. A couple players did not live up to expectations, first Kenny Deuchar, who worked hard but failed to connect many passes and turned the ball over far too many times: Second, was Robbie Findley, who may still be a bit slow from the injury last week, but he simply did not look like the aggressive attacking player we have seen in recent weeks.
I have to say that I thought this was one of the worst performances of the season, it was close to the 4-1 debacle against DC United. I am not sure what happened, if KC just played that much better, or if our guys let up a little based on their recent success? It seemed to be almost a mirror image of the match a couple weeks ago when RSL dominated KC but only got a draw, but this time fate, luck, or karma was in the Wizards favor and they get the points from the own goal.
RSL will need to quickly regroup if they want to prove to the world, MLS, their fans, and themselves that they are to be taken as real contenders for the Western conference title, or even a playoff spot. Houston did not look incredible against Dallas and the Dynamo have only one win on the road, but 4 ties. In RSL’s favor is the fact that the Dynamo have a first round LHUSOC match on Tuesday, and while they will probably not play all their starters, it should impact their entire roster having to travel from Houston to Charleston and then to Salt Lake all in 2 days.
Home matches are going to be very rare for RSL towards the end of the season and we have to find a way to get points on the road, if not the recent success may be very short lived.
OFF MY SOAPBOX
Oh as a footnote, I am picking DC United 3-2 over LA and Germany over Spain by the same margin in extra time.
This entry was posted on June 29, 2008 at 11:30 am and is filed under The soapbox. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.