Big stakes for Real Salt Lake
There is a lot at stake on Saturday for both teams, Columbus can leapfrog both Chicago and New England ending up in first place in the Eastern conference with a win over Real Salt Lake on Saturday, while RSL is looking to prove that scoring 3 goals on the road against a good Houston team wasn’t a fluke, but giving up 4 goals was. RSL can’t regain first place with a win, but they can add to their second place lead over the rest of the Western conference and close in on Houston which now has a 5 point lead in the standing, after two high scoring victories (4-3 over RSL , and a 4-0 thrashing of Chivas in the last 7 days).
Neither side will be at 100% for this matchup, Columbus are missing: Hendrickson and Eleio due to injuries and Ekpo is playing in the gold medal match at the Olympics. RSL is still hampered by injuries with Beltran, Joy, and Sturgis out, and Kovalenko is listed as questionable, both Robbie Findley and Kyle Beckerman are listed as probable. This means that Robbie Russell will likely get his second straight start on the back line, and with Olave back in his normal position the defense should be back to their old stingy ways.
Columbus has been one of the best offensive teams this year in MLS, they are third in scoring with 31 goals, behind only DC United and the Galaxy. Their leading scorer is Alejandro Moreno with 7 goals and 4 assists and he recently was called back into national team action and scored for them in a recent friendly, Robbie Rogers follows him with 5 goals and 1 assist, and the Columbus DP Guillermo Barros Schelotto has added 4 goals and 12 assists to the Crew attack. They also have 6 other players with at least two goals this season, so their offensive power has to be respected, but their defense is a very different case. Only 3 teams have given up more goals than the boys in yellow and black, DC United, and the two teams from LA. Columbus have given up 28 goals so far this year and keeper Will Hesmer has seen his GAA go up to 1.40, compared to 1.20 for Nick Rimando.
RSL has seen a major shift in their ability to score on the road, in their first 8 road matches they scored a total of 4 goals, but last weekend saw them put 3 goals on the scoreboard against a very good Houston team. Robbie Findley leads RSL with 5 goals and 4 assists and Javi Morales is just behind him with 4 goals and 8 assists, last week saw Kenny Deuchar get back into the scoring column with his beautiful 80th minute goal against Houston, and Yura Movsisyan got his first goal of the 2008 season in that same match. RSL still only has 5 players that have scored more than one goal this season, but recent additions like Clint Mathis and Will Johnson, should provide an offensive spark for the team.
The strength of RSL in 2008 has been the defense, no not just Nick Rimando (who no matter what the cynics say about his height is still one of the top 3-4 keepers in MLS), not just Jamison Olave (his is a big part of it), no not even just the back line, it has been a team effort to stop other teams from scoring, and the results even with last weekends 4-3 loss is that only two teams in MLS have given up fewer goals than Real(24), Chicago with an ungodly 16 goals scored against them, and Houston with 22. The effort of our attacking players to come back and support the defense has been incredible, from Kenny Deuchar pressuring the ball in the midfield, to Yura and Fabian making full field runs to get back and break up plays. With the high power of the Columbus offense, it will take a full team effort to shut them out again like RSL was able to do on July 12th.
I hate to say it but this one is going to be tough, but RSL rebound and get a point on the road as this one ends in a 1-1 draw.
OFF MY SOAPBOX
This entry was posted on August 23, 2008 at 6:48 pm 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.