Santos 4- Real Salt Lake 1 (the aftermath)
So while RSL played a largely reserve side in both the first and second half, Santos took a little different approach, here is their original starting 11:
Oswaldo Sanchez*
Fernando Ortiz*
Jorge Ivan Estrada*
Fernando Arce*
Edgar Castillo*
Agustin Herrera
Rafael Figueroa*
Osmar Mares*
Oribe Peralta*
Francisco Torres*
Juan Pablo Rodriguez*
* denotes players who either started or came in as subs during Santos recent championship match against Cruz Azul
So you can see there was a little different mentality than the RSL starting 11:
Chris Seitz-0
Kyle Beckerman-1423
Alex Nimo-0
Javier Morales-1278
Yura Movsisyan-199
Chris Wingert-1437
Dema Kovalenko-1270
Tino Nunez-149
Matias Mantilla-554
Dustin Kirby-0
David Horst-0
the number following their names is the number of minutes in MLS action this season
So as you can see over half of our lineup has under 200 minutes of top level action for RSL this season, a side that might struggle against any team but surely had its issues last night when facing 10 of the 11 players who just won the Mexican Championship a month ago.
I do understand the for the staff of RSL this was simply and exhibition match and on the scale of team goals and overall importance it was very low considering that a very important MLS match against one of the best teams in the East is coming up this weekend. I have to agree with the thought expressed by Utah Heretic, that our lineups in this match were a bit insulting to Santos and to the fans of both teams, when you charge 60, 45, and 30 dollars for a match, fans expect and should receive a better effort. I would have been fine if we had taken the approach of Santos, which was to play their starters for the first half, and then bring in the reserves or unproven players in the second half, but RSL played a hodge podge mix of players in both halves. Was this an effort to see how some of the second string players would fit in and be able to play with members of the starting 11? If so then the results were less than impressive, RSL struggled to find each other when making passes, some of the reserve players looked unsure of what to do next, and worse of all some players appeared to be just going through the motions. I could understand some of that from the first string players, but I expect for most reserves that getting to play in front of a large crowd and try to impress the staff in a real match would be huge opportunities.
I think Seitz was a victim of some poor communications on defense, which happens when you have a keeper who has not gotten minutes with the defense and is exasperated when you only have 2 first team players in front of you on the defensive line, but you have to give credit where it is due and Santos took some impressive shots (16 to RSL’s 13) and got a majority of them on goal (9 to6). Both of the second half goals by Santos were created by one of their top forwards (and a starter in that championship match) Christian Benitez, who was very impressive as was the way Santos attacked up the sides in the second half. Their second string was impressive and quick, you could clearly see RSL struggle to deal with the speed of Santos.
While the match may have been a struggle for RSL fans to watch, it was the opposite for Santos fans. And I have to give credit to them, they were by far some of the friendliest and most entertaining opposing fans that I have ever seen at RES. If they simply would have avoided doing the wave, it may have been even a better night. They were not as annoying as the Chivas fans, as vile as the Blanco fans, they took some ribbing directed at Sanchez (about his upcoming court date) and actually laughed at it. Heck even Sanchez did that, as I said in my live blog it was funny how he mugged to the fans and even hammed it up for the camera during the match, all this while making a couple of very impressive saves. Just maybe he isn’t as “dirty” as we would have made him seem by some of our chants last night. I talking with Santos fans after the match, they loved that they got a chance to see their team play, and I was impressed with the number of fans from out of town and state that took time to travel for a midweek exhibition match to see them.
Here is hoping that whatever RSL tried to accomplish on the pitch last night works out exactly as they needed and they can get 3 points from the Crew on Saturday evening. I hope those of you who followed the action via my live blog (over 500 page views after 5pm by over 130 unique visitors) enjoyed the action, I might do it again on the 23rd, but don’t expect it during any MLS matches, it simply is too distracting from the action, but I may consider doing a prematch and halftime posts during league matches. I was impressed by the performance of my new wireless broadband connection, it worked very well.
OFF MY SOAPBOX
This entry was posted on July 10, 2008 at 9:12 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.